Expositions of Holy Scripture: the ActsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Acts -- Commentaries
We do not hear anything more of him. Apparently, from one casual
allusion, he continued to serve the Lord in evangelistic work, but the
sweet communion of the earlier days, and the confident friendship with
the Apostle, seem to have come to an end with that sharp contention. So
Barnabas drops out of the rank of Christian workers. And yet 'he was a
good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.'
Now I have spent more time than I meant over this brief outline of the
sort of character here pointed at. Let me just gather into one or two
sentences what seem to me to be the lessons of it. The first is this,
that the tap-root of all goodness is reference to God and obedience to
Him. People tell us that morality is independent of religion. I admit
that many men are better than their creeds, and many men are worse than
their creeds; but I would also venture to assert that morality is the
garment of religion; the body of which religion is the soul; the
expression of religion in daily life. And although I am not going to
say that nothing which a man does without reference to God has any
comparative goodness in it, or that all the acts which are thus void of
reference to Him stand upon one level of evil, I do venture to say that
the noblest deed, which is not done in conscious obedience to the will
of God, lacks its supreme nobleness. The loftiest perfection of conduct
is obedience to God. And whatever excellence of self-sacrifice,
'whatsoever things lovely and of good report,' there may be, apart from
the presence of this perfect motive, those deeds are imperfect. They do
not correspond either to the whole obligations or to the whole
possibilities of man, and, therefore, they are beneath the level of the
highest good. Good is measured by reference to God.
Then, further, let me remark that one broad feature which characterises
the truest goodness is the suppression of self. That is only another
way of saying the same thing as I have been saying. It is illustrated
for us all through this story of Barnabas. Whosoever can say, 'I think
not of myself, but of others; of the cause; of the help I can give to
men; and I lay not goods only, nor prejudices only, nor the pride of
position and the supremacy of place only at the feet of God, but I lay
down my whole self; and I desire that self may be crucified, that God
may live in me,'--he, and only he, has reached the height of goodness.
Goodness requires the suppression of self.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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