Philippian Studies: Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the PhilippiansMoule, H. C. G. (Handley Carr Glyn)
Religion
Philippian Studies: Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians
Moule, H. C. G. (Handley Carr Glyn)
Bible. Philippians -- Commentaries
Here let us pause in our paraphrasing version, and sit down as it were
to gather up and weigh some of the treasures we have found.
i. We have had before us, in the whole passage, that ever-recurring
lesson, Holiness in the Truth, as Truth--"the Truth as it is in
Jesus"--is the living secret of Holiness. We have still in our ears
the celestial music, infinitely sweet and full, of the great paragraph
of the Incarnation, the journey of the Lord of Love from glory to glory
by the way of the awful Cross. May we not now give ourselves awhile
wholly to reverie, and feast upon the divine poetry at our leisure?
Not so; the immediate sequel is--that we are to be holy. We are _to
act_ in the light and wonder of so vast an act of love, in the wealth
and resource of "so great salvation." We are to set spiritually to
work. We are to learn that all-important lesson in religion, the holy
and humble energy and independence which come to the man who "knows
whom he has believed," and is aware that he possesses "all spiritual
blessing" (Eph. i. 3) in Him. We are to rise up and, if need be, walk
alone, alone of human help, in the certainty that Christ has died for
us, and reigns for us, and in us. Our Paul may be far away in some
distant Rome, and we may sorely miss him. But we have at hand Jesus
Christ, who "took Bondservant's Form," and obeyed even unto death for
us, and who is on the eternal throne for us, and who lives within us by
His Spirit. Looking upon Him in the glory of His Person and His Work,
we are not only to wonder, not only even to worship; we are to work; to
"work out" our spiritual blessings[7] into a life which shall be full
of Him, and in which we shall indeed be "saved" ourselves, and help
others around us to their salvation. In the "fear and trembling" of
those who feel the blissful awfulness of an eternal Presence, we are to
set ourselves, with the inexhaustible diligence of hope, to the
business of the spiritual life. We are to bring all the treasures of a
manifested and possessed Redeemer to bear upon the passing hour, and to
let Him be seen in us, "Christ our Life," always formative and
empowering.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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