The Apostle tells us, negatively, that we are not to think more
highly than we ought to think, and positively that we are to 'think
soberly.'
To arrive at a just estimate of ourselves the estimate must ever be
accompanied with a distinct consciousness that all is God's gift.
That will keep us from anything in the nature of pride or
over-weening self-importance. It will lead to true humility, which is
not ignorance of what we can do, but recognition that we, the doers,
are of ourselves but poor creatures. We are less likely to fancy that
we are greater than we are when we feel that, whatever we are, God
made us so. 'What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now, if thou
didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received
it?'
Further, it is to be noted that the estimate of gifts which Paul
enjoins is an estimate with a view to service. Much
self-investigation is morbid, because it is self-absorbed; and much
is morbid because it is undertaken only for the purpose of
ascertaining one's 'spiritual condition.' Such self-examination is
good enough in its way, and may sometimes be very necessary; but a
testing of one's own capacities for the purpose of ascertaining what
we are fit for, and what therefore it is our duty to do, is far more
wholesome. Gifts are God's summons to work, and our first response to
the summons should be our scrutiny of our gifts with a distinct
purpose of using them for the great end for which we received them.
It is well to take stock of the loaves that we have, if the result be
that we bring our poor provisions to Him, and put them in His hands,
that He may give them back to us so multiplied as to be more than
adequate to the needs of the thousands. Such just estimate of our
gifts is to be attained mainly by noting ourselves at work. Patient
self-observation may be important, but is apt to be mistaken; and the
true test of what we can do is what we _do_ do.
The just estimate of our gifts which Paul enjoins is needful in order
that we may ascertain what God has meant us to be and do, and may
neither waste our strength in trying to be some one else, nor hide
our talent in the napkin of ignorance or false humility. There is
quite as much harm done to Christian character and Christian service
by our failure to recognise what is in our power, as by ambitious or
ostentatious attempts at what is above our power. We have to be
ourselves as God has made us in our natural faculties, and as the new
life of Christ operating on these has made us new creatures in Him
not by changing but by enlarging our old natures. It matters nothing
what the special form of a Christian man's service may be; the
smallest and the greatest are alike to the Lord of all, and He
appoints His servants' work. Whether the servant be a cup-bearer or a
counsellor is of little moment. 'He that is faithful in that which is
least, is faithful also in much.'
The positive aspect of this right estimate of one's gifts is, if we
fully render the Apostle's words, as the Revised Version does, 'so to
think as to think soberly.' There is to be self-knowledge in order to
'sobriety,' which includes not only what we mean by sober-mindedness,
but self-government; and this aspect of the apostolic exhortation
opens out into the thought that the gifts, which a just estimate of
ourselves pronounces us to possess, need to be kept bright by the
continual suppression of the mind of the flesh, by putting down
earthly desires, by guarding against a selfish use of them, by
preventing them by rigid control from becoming disproportioned and
our masters. All the gifts which Christ bestows upon His people He
bestows on condition that they bind them together by the golden chain
of self-control.