The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the CorinthiansDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the Corinthians
Dods, Marcus
Bible. Corinthians, 1st -- Commentaries
Are we living a genuine and true life? Are we living up to what we
know to be the truth about life? Christ has given us the true estimate
of this world and all that is in it, He has measured for us God's
requirements, He has shown us what is the truth about God's love;--are
we living in this truth? Do we not find that in our best intentions
there is some mixture of foreign elements, and in our most assured
choice of Christ some remaining elements which will lead us back from
our choice? Even while we own Christ as our Saviour from sin, we are
but half-inclined to go out from its bondage. We pray God for
deliverance, and when He throws wide open before us the gate that
leads away from temptation, we refuse to see it, or hesitate until
again it is closed. We know how we may become holy, and yet will not
use our knowledge.
Let us, whatever else, be genuine. Let us not trifle with the purpose
and requirements of Christ. In our deepest and clearest consciousness
we see that Christ does open the way to the true life of man; that it
is our part to make room for this self-sacrificing life in our own day
and in our own circumstances; that until we do so we can only by
courtesy be called Christians. The convictions and beliefs which
Christ inspires are convictions and beliefs about what we should be,
and what Christ means all human life to be, and until these
convictions and beliefs are embodied in our actual living selves, and
in our conduct and life, we feel that we are not genuine. Time will
bring us no relief from this humiliating position, unless time brings
us at length to yield ourselves freely to Christ's Spirit, and unless,
instead of looking at the kingdom He seeks to establish as a quite
impossible Utopia, we set ourselves resolutely and wholly to aid in
the annexing to His rule our own little world of business and of all
the relations of life. To have convictions is well, but if these
convictions are not embodied in our life, then we lose our life, and
our house is built on sand.
_ON GOING TO LAW._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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