'By the grace of God I am what I am.' Now that word 'grace' has got
to be worn threadbare, and to mean next door to nothing, in the ears
and minds of a great many continual hearers of the Gospel. But
Paul had a very definite idea of what he meant by it; and what he
meant by it was a very large thing, which we may well ponder for a
moment as being the only thing which will transform and ennoble
character and will produce fruit that a man need not be ashamed of.
The grace of God, in Paul's use of the words, which is the scriptural
use of them generally, implies these two things which are connected
as root and product--the active love of God, in exercise towards us
low and sinful creatures, and the gifts with which that love comes
full charged to men. These two things, which at bottom are one, love
and its gifts, are all, in the Apostle's judgment, gathered up and
stored, as in a great storehouse, in Jesus Christ Himself, and
through Him are made accessible to us, and brought to bear upon us
for the ennobling of our natures, and the investing of us with graces
and beauties of character, all strange to us apart from these.
Now it seems to me that these two things, which come from one root,
are the precise things which you and I need in order to make us
nobler and purer and more Godlike men than otherwise we could ever
become. For what is it that men need most for noble and pure living?
These two things precisely--motive and power to carry out the
dictates of conscience.
Every man in the world knows enough of duty and of right to be a far
nobler man than any man in the world is. And it is not for want of
clear convictions of duty, it is not for want of recognised models
and patterns of life, that men go wrong; but it is because there are
these two things lacking, motives for nobler service, and power to do
and be what they know they ought to be. And precisely here Paul's
gospel comes in, 'By the grace of God I am what I am.' That grace,
considered in its two sides of love and of giving, supplies all that
we want.
It supplies motives. There is nothing that will bend a man's will
like the recognition of divine love which it is blessedness to come
in contact with, and to obey. You may try to sway him by motives of
advantage and self-interest, and to thunder into his ears the pealing
words of duty and right and 'ought,' and there is no adequate
response. You cannot soften a heart by the hammers of the law. You
cannot force a man to do right by brandishing before him the whip
that punishes doing wrong. You cannot sway the will by anything but
the heart; and when you can touch the deepest spring it moves the
whole mass.
You have seen some ponderous piece of machinery, which resists all
attempts of a puny hand laid upon it to make it revolve. But down in
one corner is a little hidden spring. Touch that and with majestic
slowness and certainty the mighty mass turns. You know those
rocking-stones down in the south of England; tons of weight poised
upon a pin point, and so exquisitely balanced that a child's finger
rightly applied may move the mass. So the whole man is made mobile
only by the touch of love; and the grace that comes to us, and says,
'If ye love Me, keep My commandments'--is, as I believe, the sole
motive which will continuously and adequately sway the rebellious,
self-centred wills of men, to obedience resulting in nobility of
life.
The other aspect of this same great word is, in like manner, that
which we need. What men want is, first of all, the will to be noble
and good; and, second, the power to carry out the will. It is God
that worketh in us both the willing and the doing. I venture to
affirm that there is no power known, either to thinkers, or
philanthropists, or doctrinaires, or strivers after excellence in the
world--no power known and available which will lift a life to such
heights of beauty and self-sacrificing nobility, as will the power
that comes to us by communication of the grace that is in Jesus
Christ.
I am perpetually trying to insist, dear brethren, upon this one
thought, that the communication of actual new life is the central
gift of the Gospel; and this new life it is, this nature endowed with
new desires, hopes, aims, capacities, which alone will lift the whole
man into unwonted heights of beauty and serenity. It is the grace of
God, the gift of His Divine Spirit who will dwell with all of us, if
we will, which alone can be trusted to make men good.
And now, if that be true, what follows? Surely this, that for all you
who have, in any measure, caught a glimpse of what you ought to be,
and have been more or less vainly trying to realise your ideal, and
reach your goal, there is a better way than the way of self-centred
and self-derived and self-dependent effort. There is the way of
opening your hearts and spirits to the entrance and access of that
great power, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which will do in us
and for us all that we know we ought to do, and yet feel hampered and
hindered in performing.
Oh, dear friends! there are many of you, I believe, who have more or
less spasmodically and interruptedly, but with a continual recurrence
to the effort, sought to plant your feet firmly in the paths of
righteousness, and have more or less failed. Listen to this Gospel,
and accept it, and put it to the proof. The love of God which is in
Christ Jesus, and the life which that love brings in its hands, for
all of us who will trust it, will dwell in you if you will, and mould
you into His own likeness, and the law of the spirit of life which
was in Christ Jesus will make us free from the law of sin and death.
All noble living is a battle. Can you and I, with our ten thousand,
meet him that cometh against us with his twenty, the temptations of
the world and of its Prince? Send for the reinforcements, and Jesus
Christ will come and teach your hands to war and your fingers to
fight. All noble life is self-denial, coercion, restraint; and can my
poor, feeble hands apply muscular force enough to the brake to keep
the wheels clogged, and prevent them from whirling me downhill into
ruin? Let Him come and put His great gentle hand on the top of yours,
and that will enable you to scotch the wheels, and make self-denial
possible. All noble life is a building up by slow degrees from the
foundation. And can you and I complete the task with our own limited
resources, and our own feeble strengths? Will not 'all that pass by
begin to mock' us and say, 'This man began to build and was not able
to finish'? That is the epitaph written over all moralities and over
all lives which, catching some glimpse of the good and the true and
the noble, have tried, apart from Christ, to reproduce them in
themselves. Frightful gaps, and an unfinished, however fair structure
end them all. Go to Him. 'His hand hath laid the foundation of the
house, His hand shall also finish it.' He who is Himself the
foundation-stone is also the headstone of the corner, which is
brought forth with shouting of 'Grace! Grace unto it!'
I need not, I suppose, linger to remind you what important and large
lessons these thoughts carry, not only for men who are trying to work
at the task of mending and making their own characters, but on the
larger scale, for all who seek to benefit and elevate their fellows.
Brethren, it is not for me to depreciate any workers who, in any
department, and by any methods, seek, and partially effect, the
elevation of humanity. But I should be untrue to my own deepest
convictions, and unfaithful to the message which God's providence has
given it to me as my life's task to proclaim, if I did not declare
that nothing will truly _re-form_ humanity, society, the nation, the
city, except that which re-creates the individual: 'the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ' entering into their midst.
II. And so, secondly, and very briefly, notice the lesson we get here
as to how we should think of our own attainments.
I have already pointed out that there are two beautiful touches in my
text. The Apostle traces everything that he is, in his character and
in his Christian standing and in his Apostolic work and success, to
that grace that has come down upon him, and clothed his nakedness
with so glorious a garment. And then, in addition to that, he
modestly, and with a fine sense of dignity, refrains from parading
his attainments or his achievements, and says, 'It is not for me to
estimate what I am; it is for you to do it.' True, indeed, in the
next verse he does set forth, in very lofty language, his claims to
be in nothing behind the very chiefest of the Apostles, and 'to have
laboured more abundantly than they all.' But still the spirit of that
humble and yet dignified silence runs through the whole context. 'By
the grace of God I am--what I am.'
Well, then, it is not necessary for a man to be ignorant, or to
pretend that he is ignorant, of what he can do. We hear a great deal
about the unconsciousness of genius. There is a partial truth in it;
and possibly the highest examples of power and success, in any
department of mental or intellectual effort, are unaware of their
achievements and stature. But if a man can do a certain kind of
service there is no harm whatever in his recognising the fact that he
can do it. The only harm is in his thinking that because he can, he is
a very fine fellow, and that the work itself is a great work; and
so setting himself up above his brethren. There is a vast deal of
hypocrisy in what is called unconsciousness of power. Most men who
have been chosen and empowered to do a great work for God or for men,
in any department, have been aware that they could do it. But the
less we think about ourselves, in any way, the better. The more
entire our recognition of the influx of grace on which we depend for
keeping our reservoir full, the less likelihood there will be of
touchy self-assertion, the less likelihood of the misuse of the
powers that we have. If we are to do much for God, if we are to keep
what we have already attained, if we are to make our own lives sweet
and beautiful, if we are to be invested with any increase of
capacity, or led to any higher heights of nobleness and
Christlikeness, we must copy, and make a conscious effort to copy,
these two things, which marked the Apostle's estimate of himself--a
distinct recognition that we are only reservoirs and nothing
more--'What hast thou that thou hast not received? Why then dost thou
glory as if thou hadst not received it?'--and a humble waiving aside
of the attempt to determine what it is that we are. For however
clearly a man may know his own powers and achievements, it is hard
for him to estimate the relations of these to his whole character.
So, dear brethren, although it is a very homely piece of advice, and
may seem to be beneath the so-called dignity of the pulpit, let me
venture just to remind you that self-conceit is no disease peculiar
to the ten-talented people, but is quite as rife, if not a good deal
rifer, among those with one talent. They are very humble when it
comes to work, and are quite contented to wrap the one talent up in a
napkin then; but when it comes to self-assertion, or what they expect
to receive of recognition from others, they need to be reminded quite
as much as their betters in endowment--'By the grace of God I am what
I am.'
III. And so, lastly, one word about the responsibility for our
co-operation with the grace, in order to the accomplishment of its
results.
'The grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain,' says Paul.
'Not I, but the grace of God which was with me, and so I laboured
more abundantly than they all.' That is to say, God in His giving
love; Christ with His ever out-flowing Spirit, move round our hearts,
and desire to enter. But the grace, the love, the gifts of the love
may all be put away by our unfaithfulness, by our non-receptivity, by
our misuse, and by our negligence. Paul yielded himself to the grace
that was brought to work upon him. Have you yielded yourselves?
Paul said, 'By the grace of God I am what I am.' He could not have
said that, could he, if he had known that the most part of what he
was was dead against God's will and purpose? Has God anything to do
with making you what you are, or has it been the devil that has had
the greater share in it? This man, because he knew that he had
submitted himself to the often painful, searching, crucifying,
self-restraining and stimulating influences of the Gospel and Spirit
of Christ, could say, 'God's grace has made me what I am, and I
helped Him to make me.' And can you say anything like that?
Take your life. In how many of its deeds has there been present the
consciousness of God and His love? Take your character. How much of
it has been shot through and through, so to speak, by the fiery darts
of that cleansing, warming, consuming grace of God? Are you daily
being baptized in that Spirit, searched by that Spirit, condemned by
that grace? Is it the grace of God, or nature and self and the world
and the flesh that have made you what you are?
Oh, brethren I let us cultivate the sense of our need of this divine
help, for it does not come where men do not know how weak they are,
and how much they want it. The mountain tops are high,--yes! and they
are dry; there is no water there. The rivers run in the green valleys
deep down. 'God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.'
Let us see that we open our hearts to the reception of these
quickening and cleansing influences, for it is possible for us to
cover ourselves over with such an impenetrable covering that that
grace cannot pass through it. Let us see to it that we keep ourselves
in close contact with the foundation of all this grace, even Jesus
Christ Himself, by desire, by faith, by love, by communion, by
meditation, by approximation, by sympathy, by service. And let us see
that we use the grace that we possess. 'For to him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not'--not possessing in any real sense
because not utilising for its appointed purpose--'shall be taken away
even that he hath.' Wherefore, brethren, I 'beseech you that ye
receive not the grace of God in vain.'