Christ's kingdom is near us all, whether we are heathen, infidel,
profligate or not.
Here is a distinct recognition of two things--(a) Degrees of
approximation; (b) decisive separation between those who are, and
those who are not, within the kingdom.
This Scribe was near, and yet not in, the kingdom, because, like so
many in all ages, he had an intellectual hold of principles which he
had never followed out to their intellectual issues, nor ever
enthroned as, in their practical issues, the guides of his life. How
constantly we find characters of similar incompleteness among
ourselves!
How many of us have true thoughts concerning God's law and what it
requires, which ought, in all reason, to have brought us to the
consciousness of our own sin, and are yet untouched by one pang of
penitence! How many of us have lying in our heads, like disused
furniture in a lumber-room, what we suppose to be beliefs of ours,
which only need to be followed out to their necessary results to
refurnish with a new equipment the whole of our religious thinking!
How few of us do really take pains to bring our beliefs into clear
sunlight, and to follow them wherever they lead us! There is no
commoner fault, and no greater foe, than the hazy, lazy half-belief,
of which its owner neither knows the grounds nor perceives the
intellectual or the practical issues.
There are multitudes who have, or have had, convictions of which the
only rational outcome is practical surrender to Jesus Christ by faith
and love. Such persons abound in Christian congregations and in
Christian homes. They are on the verge of 'the great surrender,' but
they do not go beyond the verge, and so they perpetrate 'the great
refusal.' And to all such the word of our text should sound as a
warning note, which has also hope in its bone. 'Not far from' is still
'outside.'