The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the PhilippiansRainy, Robert
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Philippians
Rainy, Robert
Bible. Philippians -- Commentaries
Strong appeals are made in our day to members of the Christian Church to
engage actively in all kinds of Christian work. They are summoned to go
forth aggressively upon the world's misery and sin. This has become a
characteristic note of our time. Such appeals were needed. It is a shame
that so many Christians have absolved themselves from the obligation to
place at their Lord's service the aptitudes and the energies with which
He has endowed them. Yet in this wholesale administration diversities
are apt to be overlooked. Christians may be undervalued who do not
possess qualities fitting them for the special activities; or,
attempting these without much aptitude, and finding little success, they
may be unduly cast down. It is important to lay stress on this. There
are some, perhaps we should say many, who must come to the conclusion,
if they judge aright, that their gifts and opportunities indicate for
them, as their sphere, a somewhat narrow round of duties, mostly of that
ordinary type which the common experience of human life supplies. But if
they bring into these a Christian heart; if they use the opportunities
they have; if they are watchful to please their Lord in the life of the
family, the workshop, the market; if the purifying influence of the
faith by which they live comes to light in the steady excellence of
their character and course,--then they need have no sense of exclusion
from the work of Christ and of His Church. They, too, do missionary
work. Blameless, harmless, unrebuked, they are seen as lights in the
world. They contribute, in the manner that is most essential of all, to
the Church's office in the world. And their place of honour and reward
shall be far above that of many a Christian busybody, who is too much
occupied abroad to keep the light clear and bright at home.
Blameless, then, harmless, unaspersed, must the children of God, His
redeemed children, be. So will the light of Christian character come
clearly out, and Christians will be "luminaries, holding forth the word
of life."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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