The word translated 'fervent' is literally boiling. The metaphor is
very plain and intelligible. The spirit brought into contact with
Christian truth and with the fire of the Holy Spirit will naturally
have its temperature raised, and will be moved by the warm touch as
heat makes water in a pot hung above a fire boil. Such emotion,
produced by the touch of the fiery Spirit of God, is what Paul
desires for, and enjoins on, all Christians; for such emotion is the
only way by which the diligence, without which no Christian progress
will be made, can be kept up.
No man will work long at a task that his heart is not in; or if he
does, because he is obliged, the work will be slavery. In order,
then, that diligence may neither languish and become slothfulness,
nor be felt to be a heavy weight and an unwelcome necessity, Paul
here bids us see to it that our hearts are moved because there is a
fire below which makes 'the soul's depths boil in earnest.'
Now, of course, I know that, as a great teacher has told us, 'The
gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul,' and I know
that there is a great deal of emotional Christianity which is worth
nothing. But it is not that kind of fervour that the Apostle is
enjoining here. Whilst it is perfectly true that mere emotion often
does co-exist with, and very often leads to, entire negligence as to
possessing and manifesting practical excellence, the true relation
between these is just the opposite--viz. that this fervour of which I
speak, this wide-awakeness and enthusiasm of a spirit all quickened
into rapidity of action by the warmth which it has felt from God in
Christ, should drive the wheels of life. Boiling water makes steam,
does it not? And what is to be done with the steam that comes off the
'boiling' spirit? You may either let it go roaring through a
waste-pipe and do nothing but make a noise and be idly dissipated in
the air, or you may lead it into a cylinder and make it lift a
piston, and then you will get work out of it. That is what the
Apostle desires us to do with our emotion. The lightning goes
careering through the sky, but we have harnessed it to tram-cars
nowadays, and made it 'work for its living,' to carry our letters and
light our rooms. Fervour of a Christian spirit is all right when it
is yoked to Christian work, and made to draw what else is a heavy
chariot. It is not emotion, but it is indolent emotion, that is the
curse of much of our 'fervent' Christianity.
There cannot be too much fervour. There may be too little outlet
provided for the fervour to work in. It may all go off in comfortable
feeling, in enthusiastic prayers and 'Amens!' and 'So be it, Lords!'
and the like, or it may come with us into our daily tasks, and make
us buckle to with more earnestness, and more continuity. Diligence
driven by earnestness, and fervour that works, are the true things.
And surely, surely there cannot be any genuine
Christianity--certainly there cannot be any deep Christianity--which
is not fervent.
We hear from certain quarters of the Church a great deal about the
virtue of moderation. But it seems to me that, if you take into
account what Christianity tells us, the 'sober' feeling is fervent
feeling, and tepid feeling is imperfect feeling. I cannot understand
any man believing as plain matter-of-fact the truths on which the
whole New Testament insists, and keeping himself 'cool,' or, as our
friends call it, 'moderate.' Brethren, enthusiasm--which properly
means the condition of being dwelt in by a god--is the wise, the
reasonable attitude of Christian men, if they believe their own
Christianity and are really serving Jesus Christ. They should be
'diligent in business, fervent'--boiling--in spirit.
III. The diligence and the fervency are both to be animated by the
thought, 'Serving the Lord!'
Some critics, as many of you know, no doubt, would prefer to read
this verse in its last clause 'serving the time.' But that seems to
me a very lame and incomplete climax for the Apostle's thought, and
it breaks entirely the sequence which, as I think, is discernible in
it. Much rather, he here, in the closing member of the triplet,
suggests a thought which will be stimulus to the diligence and fuel
to the fire that makes the spirit boil.
In effect he says, 'Think, when your hands begin to droop, and when
your spirits begin to be cold and indifferent, and languor to steal
over you, and the paralysing influences of the commonplace and the
familiar, and the small begin to assert themselves--think that you
are serving the Lord.' Will that not freshen you up? Will that not
set you boiling again? Will it not be easy to be diligent when we
feel that we are 'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye'? There are many
reasons for diligence--the greatness of the work, for it is no small
matter for us to get the whole lump of our nature leavened with the
good leaven; the continual operation of antagonistic forces which are
all round us, and are working night-shifts as well as day ones,
whether we as Christians are on short time or not, the brevity of the
period during which we have to work, and the tremendous issues which
depend upon the completeness of our service here--all these things
are reasons for our diligence. But _the_ reason is: 'Thou Christ
hast died for me, and livest for me; truly I am Thy slave.' That is
the thought that will make a man bend his back to his work, whatever
it be, and bend his will to his work, too, however unwelcome it may
be; and that is the thought that will stir his whole spirit to
fervour and earnestness, and thus will deliver him from the
temptations to languid and perfunctory work that ever creep over us.
You can carry that motive--as we all know, and as we all forget when
the pinch comes--into your shop, your study, your office, your mill,
your kitchen, or wherever you go. 'On the bells of the horses there
shall be written, Holiness to the Lord,' said the prophet, and 'every
bowl in Jerusalem' may be sacred as the vessels of the altar. All
life may flash into beauty, and tower into greatness, and be smoothed
out into easiness, and the crooked things may be made straight and
the rough places plain, and the familiar and the trite be invested
with freshness and wonder as of a dream, if only we write over them,
'For the sake of the Master.' Then, whatever we do or bear, be it
common, insignificant, or unpleasant, will change its aspect, and all
will be sweet. Here is the secret of diligence and of fervency, 'I
set the Lord always before me.'