Bible Commentaries

On the Heights

Colossians 3:1

What are the things that are above? Does the Apostle mean the things that belong to the future life? Well, they do belong to the future life, and it is well for us to think of that life, and to think that we shall live in it, and that these things are the things that are current coin there. But he means the present life, for he exhorts us to seek these things, and to have them now, the things that abide, of which death cannot rob us, the things which belong to the spirit and character of men. They are too many to enumerate. Some of them are mentioned in the latter part of this chapter, but there is one in Whom they are all embodied. Seek the things that are above "where Christ is". Seek character, the Christlike character, purity, truth, love to God and men, reached through faith and fellowship. These are the highest things a man can seek.

Now, what about them? This: you must seek them—they do not come without seeking—and seek them with resolute and set purpose. Set your mind or your heart on them, they may be yours, though it be only by almost desperate endeavour, and they are worth more than all the glory and honour and wealth of all the world. The greatest achievement on earth is the achievement of character in yourself and in others.

I. Now, nothing is more certain than that it is one of the easiest things in the world to be called off from this quest, and that people often give it up as life goes on and as cares and possessions accumulate. There is a tremendous downward pull which is constantly exerted, and which increases as life goes on. There is an awful glamour cast over physical pleasure and material gain, and there are seasons in the life of the best of us when it seems as if character were nothing in comparison with money or pleasure.

Life, the high life in a Colossians 3:1

This exhortation is based on a fact and a principle. The fact Colossians 3:1

You see where the "if" comes in. It is not "if Christ be risen from the dead". That is certain fact St. Paul was sure of it. The evidence was so widespread. It is not if Christ be raised, but if ye then were raised with Christ And yet, so far as these Christians at Colossae were concerned, St. Paul did not wish to express any doubt. It is the argumentative "if". It might be rendered "since". Since ye then were raised together with Christ. Assuming that your conversion is as real, your faith as genuine as that of these Colossians 3:1

I have often applied to idiots in my own mind, that sublime expression of Scripture that their life is hidden with God.

—Wordsworth to Prof. Wilson.

References.—III:1.—W. Pierce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p222. C. Brown, God and Colossians 3:1-2

Inquire into—

I. The Nature of this Higher Life.—"Seek the things that are above, where Christ Colossians 3:1-3

I. You must have remarked, in studying the Epistles of St. Paul, how he identifies the Christian with his Lord, in His Crucifixion, His Death, and His Resurrection. He sees in these great events figures of that moral and spiritual revolution which has taken place in the heart and soul of every believer, of every one born of God.

(a) He identifies the Christian with the Crucifixion of Christ. Referring to his old self-life, he says, "I am crucified with Christ"; he also uses the peculiar phrase "the old man" in reference to his former self, and speaks of it as being crucified. This "old Romans 6:5; Romans 6:11). In Colossians 3:5 you have the word "mortify," showing continuity of teaching on this point. This is the Apostolic doctrine as regards the believer's attitude to sin: he is dead to it.

(c) He identifies the Christian with the Resurrection of Christ: he is risen with Christ. Buried with Christ, and raised with Him too—this is the teaching of the text. The life which we now live in the power of the Son of God is equivalent to a resurrection from the dead—it is a "risen" life.

Alive unto God—that is to be our position. Pray that you may indeed "know Him, and the power of His Resurrection," as He ought to be known by all His saints. But—

II. The "power of His Resurrection" suggests further wholesome doctrine.

(a) If we are "risen with Christ" we have left our graveclothes behind us, as Jesus left His in the tomb. He did not go about during His risen life with the garments of death clinging to Him. Christ calls upon us to show forth to the world that we have done with the grave, that we are walking "in newness of life," in the power of His Resurrection.

(b) During our Lord's forty days post-resurrection sojourn He appeared ten times only to His followers. The inference is that the "risen life" of Christ was spent chiefly in communion with God. And the spiritual life of His people will suffer because of the stress of earthly things, unless they get more into contact with heaven and God, unless they, like Him, anticipate the Ascension, and "in heart and mind thither ascend". In this busy age, especially, we have need to restore our souls by communion with God.

(c) This "risen life" ought to be practically manifest in its blessed activities. "Seek those things which are above." In that one word "Seek" we have expressed the outward life of Christian effort; we have expressed also the true aim of a consecrated life—"those things which are above". But this risen life is not only seen in the outward life of earnest service, but also in—

(d) The inward life of strenuous thought. "Set your mind on the things that are above." The mind, the affection, must be centred upon God. You are called to be heavenly-minded. Brethren, "as a man thinketh in his heart" so will he become. Our thoughts, if they are heavenly thoughts are weaving for us a robe of purity, of charity, of holiness unto the Lord. As a man thinketh now so is Colossians 3:2

The idea of the present, the material, the visible, the tangible, the sensuous, has taken possession of the minds and hearts of a great many men and women of all ranks and classes, to the exclusion of the future, the spiritual, the invisible, the ideal; and the change in the conduct of people who put aside all thoughts of things higher than the things of earth is very great indeed.

I. Materialism is the attempt to account for every development of the creation as we see it, even the mind of Colossians 3:2

The things above are not precisely those of another world, but of another sphere than the habitual one of our thoughts. They are not the things above our heads, but those which are above our natural sentiments. To set our affections on things above is to set our affections on God Himself; it is to subordinate our life to Him; it is to seek and find God in everything.

—Vinet.

It is not we that set the lights before us at which we aim; they gleam upon us from beyond us; if but by the immediate gift of God; and our part is complete if we keep our eye intent to see them, and our foot resolute to climb whither they show us the way. The beacon aloft is given, the path to reach it alone is found.

—Martineau.

The Higher Preferences

Colossians 3:2

The affections have been defined as the faculty or power which regulates or determines all our likes or dislikes for persons or things, our tastes, our friendships, our loves. This faculty or power ought to be brought under control by every reasonable man and every reasonable woman. People sometimes say that there is no accounting for tastes, and to a certain extent that is quite true. We cannot always account for our own tastes, our own likes or dislikes, much less can we for those of other people. Sometimes they are instinctive, we cannot always give a reason for them; and here there is a danger. For instinct surely may be inspired by the devil just as it may be by God. You may allow your instincts to become debased, you may allow your tastes to became vitiated and mean; you may spoil your judgment so that you prefer what is ignoble and small and petty to what is great and good and noble. Now here comes in the use of a little discipline. You ought to check your preference, you must guard your instinct by choosing only what is really worthy of esteem. You must refuse to grow attached to what is unworthy of your affections, what is unworthy of your consideration.

I. Choose the Best Things.—First of all, to deal with things and subjects, you can cultivate good taste, whether it be in the matter of literature or art or conversation, or any other such thing. It is a duty to choose always the best that is within our reach. It seems obvious, it seems easy in theory; in practice it is really very difficult Self-culture always means a good deal of effort. It is such a temptation to read always the least serious books, for instance, or the books that appeal to the lighter side of cur nature, even the books that appeal to our lower side. It is so tempting in the matter of conversation to indulge in the flippant, thoughtless, and even harmful talk; it is very easy to grow very fond of it It is so easy in behaviour to allow the passions or the temper to regulate our actions, instead of our calmer and much truer judgment. You must choose the beautiful, choose the pure, choose the refined.

II. Choose the Best Friends.—Then, in the matter of persons, how is one to choose one's friends? This is somewhat an important point. A bad friend very often means one's ruin. Again you must choose what is noble and what is true. Fix your eyes upon such qualities as honour, courage, duty, unselfishness, purity. Do not allow your preference to rest upon the mean, the cowardly, the selfish, the dishonest, the impure; and then slowly and surely your affections will fix themselves upon the better traits of character. You will become naturally disposed to make good friends instead of bad ones. And still further we must be ourselves pure, ourselves unselfish. We must not choose friends simply with a view to position, or wealth, or personal advantage; choose them unselfishly, bravely, honourably, choose them for their goodness and holiness. Often that means the sacrifice of pride, position, or wealth. Do not let affection run wild, or it may choose the bad, and that bad choice may mean your ruin.

III. The Control of the Affections.—And, lastly, our affections must be controlled as regards those that we love most Remember that there is a selfish, inconsiderate kind of love. There is a love that proceeds from passion and impurity, there is a love not founded upon sympathy and upon self-sacrifice: there is also an uncurbed, unrestrained love, which regards its object as belonging absolutely to itself rather than as a trust from God. People very often, under the cover of love, will allow those they love all kinds of indulgence, all kinds of laxity. They seem to think that love is an excuse for many things that would be otherwise inadmissible. Whether in regard to things or persons, our affections need strict discipline; you may easily grow fond of what is ignoble, unworthy of respect. Let us in our prayers ask God to send His Holy Spirit into our hearts that we may follow the advice of the great Apostle to the Gentiles: "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth".

References.—III:2.—J. Stalker, Christian World Pulpit, vol1. p66. W. L. Alexander, Sermons, p309. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons (2Series), p64. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. i. p240.

Life Hid with Christ(Before Communion)

Colossians 3:3

Words like these, it is obvious, are not addressed indiscriminately to the world at large. They describe a class of people, and demand an audience, which, if fit, is also few. Not that the text is in any sense obscure, although it belongs to an age far from our own. Not that it raises needless barriers. Only, it takes for granted that we have undergone a great peculiar experience, which has brought us into a new world. In short, as very few sayings even in the New Testament do, it touches the centre and focus of personal Christianity. It tells the open secret of discipleship.

Three aspects of truth are here, I think, which may help us as we approach the Table of Christ.

I. First, note the old life left behind. "Ye are dead," St Paul writes, or even, as in stricter accuracy we may render, "ye died". He is indicating a definite occasion in the past. Sometimes the passage of a soul into God's kingdom is a very sudden thing. It may even be as the flight of a bird for swiftness. We lie down one night our old selves, and ere we sleep again the revolution has occurred. In this text, however, suddenness of that kind is not necessarily implied. Men may die swiftly, or they may die slowly; it matters nothing, once they have wakened on the immortal side of death. At the equator no visible line is stretched round the world for all to see; nevertheless, the line is actually crossed; at some definite point the ship leaves one hemisphere and enters on the other. Just Colossians 3:3

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ has always been in the Church of God its chiefest note of glory. If the Church of God were to meet every single one of its doctrines without alluding to the subject, it would be the same, for it is not only written on parchment, but on the fleshly tablets of the heart. The Church of God is older than any one of these books, and from heart to heart, throughout Christendom, from the Day of Resurrection to this Easter Sunday, has passed the truth "The Lord is risen," and the answer to the truth, "He is risen indeed".

We are told by St. Paul that Twelve Apostles were chosen for this purpose: to witness to the Resurrection, and we know for certain that the Twelve Apostles were protected from being destroyed, when Christ suffered His Passion, because they were kept alive by God to witness the Resurrection. The first sermon the first Ministers of Christ preached was the Resurrection. We know from Holy Scripture they went out and preached this sermon, Jesus and the Resurrection. They were stoned, beaten, and imprisoned, and killed for preaching it Today, we are not stoned, or killed, or imprisoned, but we are laughed at. Of the Apostles we read, the more they were maltreated, the more they preached it; and the more we are laughed at, the more we assert it, and preach it.

I. "Christ is risen—He is risen indeed." The Greek Church asserts the fact popularly, not only in the Church but in the street. The Czar of all the Russias comes out of his palace, and, seeing the sentinel, kisses him and says, "The Lord is risen," and the soldier says, "He is risen indeed". One cabman in the street gets off his stand, and another gets off his sleigh, they embrace, and the one says to the other, "Christ is risen," and the other answers, "He is risen indeed". There the man in the street has only one thing to say that Easter morning, that Christ is risen. Now we Westerns are not so minded, but I hope this Easter morning you sing up the old song in your hearts. It is not only assertion, it is something more, it is a hymn of joy, and I hope that every one of you will sing up in your heart this morning the old song of the Church, "Christ is risen—He is risen indeed".

II. And this was the motive principle of the early martyrs. And when they were persecuted, the martyrs were simply splendid. They all of them went into the amphitheatre with this light in their souls, immortality in Christ. Perpetua—matron, mother, martyr—entered into the amphitheatre, and they were astonished at her look. They tell us that there was a light in her eyes, supernal, before which her persecutors quailed, and the beasts that were to tear her to pieces drew back. It was the light of immortality. She knew Christ had said, "Because I live, ye shall live also". So too it has been with all the martyrs all down the ages. It has been said that, after the bit of Latin which was put on the Cross, the first bit of Latin which stole into the Church was "Deo gratias," "Thanks to God," which the martyrs said when they were condemned to death, for they knew that through the grave and gate of death they should pass to a joyful resurrection.

III. Revive your poor faith on the altar of Easter. The Christian's hope Colossians 3:4

"Christ, who is our life;" name all-sacred and all-beautiful, "Holiest of holies, Jesus Christ our Lord"; tenderly and intimately near to us, transcendently above us, higher than the heavens.

To rest awhile before the revelation of His greatness and His fulness, His unsearchable riches, His love passing knowledge, will only the better prepare the believer for the simpler and larger reception of His gift of life. To apprehend the glory of the Fountain will make credible the freedom and the virtues of the stream. The earthen vessel may be as rough and poor as possible. But let it be opened to receive that water, and what may not be the bliss of purity and power within it?

He then, this same Lord Jesus Christ, is here affirmed to be our life. The phrase, we remember, is strictly Scriptural. To the recent converts at Colossae ( Colossians 3:4) St. Paul uses it, as about a fact already confessed and familiar: "When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory". This is the precise authority for our phrase. But it is only the central point, as we well know, of a large mass of New Testament language which sets out the same idea. Close at hand, in the same Colossian passage (ver3), we have a specimen: "Your life is hid with Christ in God". We have it in a form yet more vivid in the Galatian Epistle (II:20): "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me". And in that to the Ephesians the thought is carried to the inmost recess of expression, when we read (III:17) of "Christ dwelling in the heart," as a fact of experience intended to be the portion not of a select few but of every true disciple. St. John is as emphatic as St. Paul (I:11 , 12): "God hath given us eternal life; this life is in His Son; he that hath the Son hath the life".

We need not recall at length how amply the Lord's own words ( John 14:6; John 14:19) seal the language of His Apostles: "I am the life"; "Because I live ye shall live also".

I. What does it mean? In vain shall we try to answer the question to its depths, to analyse its whole secret, to explore its perfect issues. We may indeed say with reverent confidence what it does not mean. It implies no absorption of our personality into His, no identity of our self with His, such that it should ever be true to say, as has been said, and by pious teachers, that "our deepest self is God". For my own part, I cannot too earnestly deprecate such words, which I take to express conceptions alien to the whole spirit of Biblical theology, words which betray an unbalanced insistence on that great truth of Divine immanence, which needs, like all great truths, its counterpoise if it is not to sink into an error proportionally great. "Christ is our life" is a statement wholly, remotely, other than "Christ is our self". He is the Indweller, but He is not the shrine. It is written, "Christ liveth in me". But this is not to displace me but to occupy me; to be near to me with a nearness deeper and tenderer than can be thought, but all the while to be eternally and transcendently distinct and above. He is Maker, Redeemer, sovereign Lord. I am the being enabled, freely, in my personality, to respond in worshipping love to Him.

But now, within the humble limits of our perception, what does the phrase mean? It means, let us be perfectly sure, no mere figure of speech, however warm and vivid. It means no mere potency of His influence upon us, by way of precept or even of supreme example, as when the believer, pondering the Passion, feels himself "inspired," in the words of the hymn, "to suffer and to die". It means an unspeakably spiritual, and therefore unspeakably genuine, union and presence. It means the living Son of God so dwelling and moving in the inner world of the man who is united to Him by the Holy Ghost, in the bond of faith, that nothing less can be said than that the Christ of God is there. In the will He is personally and presently working. In the affections He is breathing the Divine love into the human faculty. In thoughts and purposes His presence and His motions are a living power to prompt and to guide. The man is so charged, may we dare to say, with Him that the familiar prayer, whose wonder so easily escapes us as we sing, receives an ever-developing fulfilment:—

Guard my first springs of thought and will

And with Thyself my spirit fill.

"He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," says the Apostle in a passage ( 1 Corinthians 6:17) of surprising depth and power, and as practical as possible all the while. For the context there, what is it? It is the case of a recent Corinthian convert, tempted to return to the foulest sins of the wicked city. And the Divine antidote for him, not for a cloistered and contemplative devotee, but for him, what is it to be? Just when vice smiles in his face and whispers its deadly sweetness to his soul, he is to recollect that he is "joined to the Lord, one spirit": "Christ is his life".

II. That allusion brings us already to the question, What will be the issues and results of a believing recollection that Christ to the believer is nothing less than life? Issues practical indeed will come to him who recalls the spiritual fact and, using it, turns it into power. It was his by covenant in his baptism. It became his in fruition when, by living faith in Christ his Head, he responded to his baptism and actualised its blessings. But now, the more he uses his possession, the more he possesses it. And in that possession what can it not do for him, what can he not do in it? Bather let us say, what can he not do, not in it but in Him who is his life, in whom he lives, who lives in him?

"Christ my life" will be the talisman of power on the one hand to detach him from the bondage of the world over his will, and on the other to attach him to the world in sympathetic service. He who is his life, alike and at once overcame the world and gave Himself for it So did the Head. And the limb, surrendered to the Head, will in his measure do the same, because that life is in him, and in power.

Sin and sickness are facts lying upon wholly different planes. But I for one cannot doubt that normally the soul's health is at least friendly to that of the body which, glorified at last, is to be its inseparable partner and vehicle for ever. It is most creditable that, in untold instances, the maladies and the fatigues of this tabernacle, however truly we do often "groan in it, being burdened," are mysteriously affected for relief by the remembrance that Christ is our life. And what will it not be to recite that password of immortality, true for our whole being, when we commit ourselves to Him in the act of death? It assures to the spirit an unbroken life and a present bliss with Him. It assures equally to the body the radiant wonder of resurrection after a little while.

III. Come, then, and let us "possess our possession". Let us take our Redeemer at His word, and be quite sure that for us, so doing, He is life. To live out that wonderful fact shall be our ambition, always new and supremely innocent; to "run with it, and not be weary; to walk with it, and not faint".

That great Christian, Henry Venn the elder, Simeon's early friend and guide, writes thus in a letter to his father-in-law, Charles Elliott, April, 1787:—

"I had in past days a family very dear to me, and not enough for their maintenance from year to year; and in case of my death they were to be destitute. I was, however, wonderfully free and cheerful in my heart And my preservative was wholly this, "He that hath the Son hath life"."

A long century later lived and died my late dear friend in God, George H. C. Macgregor, son of a parish minister in the north of Scotland. He once told me how came to him his first strong grasp on this same secret, Christ our life. One summer night (he was then a young probationer for the ministry) he had addressed a cottage congregation on Colossians 3:4. As he walked home in the twilight over the heather his text still sounded in his mind, and suddenly (such things do happen) its doctrine flashed and burned into a Divine reality for himself. "What, is Christ indeed my life?" And within five steps on the moorland, so he said to me with solemn emphasis, the young man passed into a new life—a life that shone unwavering with holy light and fire till, some twelve years later, still in his splendid youth, he passed upwards, only to live more perfectly and for ever by Christ who is our life.

—H. C. G. Moule (Bishop of Durham), Christian World Pulpit, vol. LXXVIII. p231.

References.—III:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No617. J. Bunting, Sermons, vol. ii. p484. III:5.—Expositor (5th Series), vol. x. p108; ibid. (6th Series), vol. i. p276; ibid. vol. xii. p191. III:6.—Ibid. (4th Series), vol. i. p23; ibid. (6th Series), vol. viii. p36. III:9.—S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for Saints" Days, p161. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xii. p69. III:9 , 10.—Ibid. (4th Series), vol. iii. pp138 , 141. III:10.—Ibid. vol. ii. p285.

The Divine Glory of Christ

Colossians 3:2

These sublime words no more fit man than Saul's armour fitted the stripling David. Of Christ alone can we say that "He is all things in all things".

I. Christ's pre-existence proves His Divinity. It cannot be said of any man that he lived for thirty centuries before his birth; but as for Jesus, He was high before He became so low, He was rich before He became so poor, He was God before He became Man. As Irving well puts it: "Tell me now, ye wise men, who deprive Him of His Divinity, how was Christ rich before He became poor if He were not God before He became man?"

II. His Divine titles teach His Divinity. In the Old Testament He is often styled "Lord" in the same sense as Jehovah. The Father styles Him His Son—not a Colossians 3:2

Some of the greatest leaders of the Church have been slow to accept St. Paul's teaching as to the equality of bond and free in Christ. St. Leo the Great, as Bishop Gore reminds us, held that the condition of a slave was a bar to orders. "He bases his refusal to allow the ordination of slaves on the ground that their condition does not leave them the liberty and leisure requisite for a priest; but it is couched in language which breathes the spirit of a Roman patrician much more than the feeling that in "Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free". He talks of the "dignity of birth" being wanting to them, and he speaks scornfully of the "mean estate (vilitas) of a slave polluting the Christian ministry"."

—Bishop Gore, Leo the Great, p142.

Colossians 3:2

Dr. Eugene Stock, in his history of the C.M.S, tells us that when Bishop Wilson went out to India, he was at once confronted with the caste question in the native Church. "He took a strong line at once. Basing his decision on the grand New Testament principle that in Christianity "there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all, and in all," he directed that as regards Church usages, "caste must be abandoned, decidedly, immediately, finally".... "In1835 Bishop Wilson visited the South and dealt earnestly and lovingly with the disaffected Christians, pleading with them the example of the Good Samaritan, who did not stop to ask who the "certain man" was, nor dreamed of being defiled by touching him. "And what," exclaimed the Bishop, rising from his seat in the crowded church, "did our blessed Master say to this? Go and do thou likewise." A long pause," says his biographer," of motionless and breath-less silence followed, broken only when he besought every one present to offer up this prayer, "Lord give me a broken heart to receive the love of Christ and obey His commands". Whilst the whole congregation were repeating this in Tamil, he bowed upon the cushion, doubtless entreating help from God, and then dismissed them with his blessing."

Christ Is All, and in All

Colossians 3:2

How little can we see of Christ but a bare and faint outline! Why, it will take all eternity to exhaust that subject; it will take all eternity to learn how good, how wise, how great, how holy, how merciful is Christ. And you observe that the Apostle seems to have got that idea here in the words of our text, for he gives us a description of Christ; but it is a remarkable description. He does not say, "You see Christ is good, Christ is loving, Christ is patient with us, Christ is tender". He does not go on to His other attributes and say, "Christ is wise, and Christ is great," but he gathers them all up into one cluster, and in six monosyllables he tells us "Christ is all, and in all".

I. Christ is all, and in all in the Bible. Wherever you open it I care not, you will come to Christ in the Bible. You will find as you read that Book that everywhere, if we look for Him, everywhere we shall find the Christ. We go back, for instance, to the Old Testament, and there in the heart of the Jewish administration we see the Lamb, the offering appointed by God and by Moses through God, smoking upon the altar, the Lamb of sacrifice for sin offered to God, and we say, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world". We go on, and turn over any page, and we are sure to encounter Christ. We come on to Colossians 3:12

Compare Mrs. Carlyle's description of Father Mathew administering the pledge in London to a crowd of unfortunate and dissipated paupers. "In the face of Father Colossians 3:12

Humility is the altar on which God wishes us to offer our sacrifices to Him.

—La Rochefoucauld

References.—III:12.—J. M. Whiton, Summer Sermons, p193. III:12 , 13.—S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. i. p136. Expositor (6th Series), vol. xi. p283.

Forgiveness

Colossians 3:13

In the last hour of that last day, when the silent morning light has glimmered through the window for the very last time before our failing eyes, and we feel the burden of our many sins pressing heavily upon us, there will be nothing that can give the trembling mind of the strongest man of us any comfort unless he can say with truth: "And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly my hope is even in Thee." Nothing, unless he can receive back through the familiar voice of the Spirit of God, speaking by a pure conscience, the same message which the Lord gave to the man sick of the palsy, " Colossians 3:13

If a man is to live with any joy and fulness, and to find what a noble abode this world may prove, there are three virtues which he must steadily pursue. The first is faith in God, for without faith existence will always be a tangled skein: the second is courage, for every life has its hills, and we breast them but poorly if our heart is faint; and the third is forbearance—forbearing one another.

I. Some of the evils of the unforbearing spirit. (1) One of the first of them to arrest me is that it makes life a constant disappointment. There is only one highway to the world's true comradeship—it is the road of forbearing one another. (2) Another evil of the unforbearing spirit is this, that it presses hardest on life's tenderest relationships. There are some worms that are content to gnaw green leaves, and to spend their lives on the branches of the tree. But there are others that are never satisfied with leaves, they must eat their way into the red heart of the rose. That is the curse of the unforbearing spirit—it gnaws at the very heart of the rose of life. (3) But there is another evil of the unforbearing temper—it reacts with certainty upon the man himself. For with what judgment we judge we shall be judged, and with what measure we mete it shall be measured unto us.

II. I wish to indicate the character of true forbearance. (1) True forbearance begins in a man's thought. It is a good thing to be forbearing in our Colossians 3:14

A word or two will explain to us the figure which the Apostle uses to convey his meaning: "Above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness". The picture in the Apostle's mind is that of one who is putting on his raiment. He sees a man throwing around his body the loose and flowing garments of antiquity. And then it occurs to him that these loose garments, no matter how fine or beautiful they be, can never be worn with comfort or with grace unless they are clasped together with a girdle. Without that girdle, drawing all together, they hamper and hinder a man at every turn. It is the perfect bond of robe and tunic, the final touch that makes them serviceable. And Colossians 3:15

To receive this peace and to keep it is to abide in blessedness. It is the peace behind which the heart of man entrenched can be at rest "when all without tumultuous seems"; the deep peace of the deep sea, though the surface of life be storm-tossed and tempest-driven.

I. It is this peace, this heavenly dove, which murmurs joy, that is to rule, to arbitrate, to he referee, to be umpire in our hearts. Men need such an umpire. The important matter, however, is to see this Divine arbitrator at work. Our judgments oftentimes hesitate in their verdicts, for life is a tangled skein, and the path of duty often winds through a labyrinth of the false and true, of good and evil, and the apparently neutral. God's peace is our greatest treasure, the preservation of it our first duty. Its decision must be final, and whatever other men may do, however right a certain course may be or them, any thing that robs us of God's peace is wrong for us.

II. But there are other and very important applications of this great truth. Let peace be the umpire not only of the heart but also of the home. The preservation of home's peace ought to be the first concern of all who belong to it. Let us make peace the ruling goddess of the home life, the umpire from whose verdict there can be no appeal. It is necessary to the growth of all that is beautiful, fragrant, and holy in human relationships.

III. Peace, God's peace, must also be made the umpire in the Church. Where strife is Christ is not. How powerfully that truth has been portrayed by the Belgian artist, Wiertz, in his great pictures, in which he always represents Jesus as turning away in pain and horror from scenes of hatred and strife. The only conflict in which the Church can engage is its holy war against the world. In the Church all must lay aside self-will, and live seeking and enjoying the peace of the household of God.

IV. Has the time not come when all good men must pray and strive to make peace the umpire between nations, and hasten the day when men will lay aside "reeking tube and iron shard," and learn to study war no more. Certainly peace must be the attitude, and the preservation of it the endeavour of all Christians, for the kingdom of God which they seek is righteousness and peace.

—D. L. Ritchie, Peace the Umpire and other Sermons, p9.

Thankfulness

Colossians 3:15

This is an abrupt appeal. Dr. Maclaren calls it "a jet of praise". When Paul's heart was fullest his speech was abruptest. The adjective "thankful" is only used this once in the New Testament. But thankfulness is a duty and delight greatly prominent in the holy pages. To be unthankful is to be unscriptural. May we so reflect upon this jet of praise that our speech and our lives shall plash with melodious fountains of thanksgiving.

I. Thankfulness is a spiritual possibility. "Be ye thankful" is not uttered to mock us. Nothing is commanded which is not possible to man through grace. (1) Note that this grace of thankfulness is a climacteric grace: "And be ye thankful". Thankfulness is the crown of the graces. Your conquering brow lacks its garland if you are wanting this celestial quality. (2) Thankfulness is recognised as in some degree already existing. Paul said literally "Become ye thankful". It is as if he said, "Become more thankful". (3) As Paul uttered this word it was a great endeavour after a grand ideal. The idea which hides in that "become" is a constant striving after an unreached standard. But this becoming thankful is no easy task. Constant prayer and ceaseless vigilance are needed if we are to attain this grace. What a noble ideal of thankfulness Paul always sets before us! In of this Epistle he presents an aspect of this ideal, "abounding in thanksgiving" (R.V.). Sing far more eloquent and far louder songs. In Ephesians 5:20 we have another illustration of the standard of gratitude, "Giving thanks always for all things". Is there "always" some cause for thanksgiving? Yes. Praise must be perennial. (4) This grand ideal has a sure secret of attainment. After the lapse of but one verse Paul says: "Giving thanks to God the Father through Him". Gratitude is evangelically achieved. All ethics are evangelically realised.

II. Thankfulness is a spiritual blessedness. How rich they are who are thankful! Ingratitude is impoverishment Thankfulness glorifies God. Thankfulness is a great spiritualising force. What a check upon gloom is gratitude! Thankfulness as it destroys the base elements of our nature develops all the higher. Thankfulness is not least a blessedness because it brings us into fellowship with the hosts of heaven.

—Dinsdale T. Young, The Enthusiasm of God, p161.

References.—III:15.—Hugh Black, Christian World Pulpit, vol1. p139. F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i. p19. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No1693. G. Body, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p184. W. H. Evans, Short Sermons for the Seasons, p151. Bishop Alexander, Verbum Crucis, p177. A. Connell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxi. p386. III:16.—W. T. Davison, Christian World Pulpit, vol1. p218. C. J. Ridgeway, The King and His Kingdom, p101. T. Sadler, Sermons for Children, p113. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvi. No2679. T. Binney, King's Weigh-House Chapel Sermons, p231. J. Bolton, Selected Sermons (2Series), p108. W. Robertson Nicoll, Ten Minute Sermons, pp251 , 259. Expositor (4th Series), vol. ii. p27. III:17.—F. St. John Corbett, The Preacher's Year, p34. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi. No913. Bishop Westcott, The Incarnation and Common Life, p125. W. H. Evans, Sermons for the Church's Year, p56. T. Arnold, The Interpretation of Scripture, p236. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. i. p67. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p302. F. Bourdillon, Plain Sermons for Family Beading (2Series), p24. S. Pearson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv. p289.

Colossians 3:20

I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm; not only without idea of resistance, but receiving the direction as a part of my own life and force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action as the law of gravity in my leaping.

—Ruskin, Praeterita, § 49.

Reference.—III:20 , 21.—C. S. Home, Relationships of Life, p13.

Colossians 3:21

His father's severity was such, that once the boy cried out, "Kill me, father, kill me at once"; and in his indignation at parental injustice, he made a will in these laconic terms, "omne matri, nihil patri."—Prof. Knight's memoir of Dr. John Duncan (Colloquia Peripatetica, p. xxxvi).

"To my deep mortification," says Darwin, "my father once said to me, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family". But my father, who was the kindest man I ever knew, and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words."

Colossians 3:22

Bismarck attributed the Germans" victories over the French to the fact that "I know that there is Some One who sees me when the lieutenant does not see me". "Do you believe, your Excellency, that they really reflect on this?" asked Frstenstein. "Reflect, no; it is an instinct, a feeling, a tone, I believe."

To the Half-Hearted

Colossians 3:23

Note how our text is introduced: it has a very suggestive and illuminative context. "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh," that is verse twenty-two; and then, "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord," that is verse twenty-three. Now the servants of whom Paul speaks are not domestic servants in our sense. They were slaves, bought for a little money: the property and the chattels of their master. Yet even to slaves, who got no wages and who had no rights, clear and imperious comes the command of God, "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily". I want you to note, too, that this text was never better illustrated than in the life of the man who was inspired to pen it. It Colossians 3:23

In his sixteenth year he [Bismarck] was confirmed by Schleiermacher in the little Trinity Church at Berlin, and one interesting reminder of this event remains. The text then placed in his hands by the great theologian was from the Epistle to the Colossians , "whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men". There are various evidences that this mandate impressed him. It survived the roystering, the doubts, the cynicism, which at various times eclipsed it, and it is now written in golden letters above his tomb at Friedrichsruh.

—A. D. White, Seven Great Statesmen (1910), p403.

References.—III:23.—R. G. Soans, Sermons for the Young, p63. J. Clifford, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liii. p324. H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p398. J. M. Neale, Sermons Preached in Sackville College Chapel, vol. iv. p190. III:23 , 24.—H. P. Liddon, Sermons Preached on Special Occasions, p193. III:24.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xx. No1205. W. H. Evans, Sermons far the Church's Year, p126. IV:2.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No354. John Kelman, Ephemera Eternitatis, p266. IV:3.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. vii. p398; ibid. vol. x. p344.