_THE PRAYER._
"For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to
pray and to make request for you, that ye may be filled with the
knowledge of His will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to
walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every
good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with
all power, according to the might of His glory, unto all patience
and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks unto the Father."--COL. i.
9-12 (Rev. Ver.).
We have here to deal with one of Paul's prayers for his brethren. In
some respects these are the very topmost pinnacles of his letters.
Nowhere else does his spirit move so freely, in no other parts are the
fervour of his piety and the beautiful simplicity and depth of his love
more touchingly shown. The freedom and heartiness of our prayers for
others are a very sharp test of both our piety to God and our love to
men. Plenty of people can talk and vow who would find it hard to pray.
Paul's intercessory prayers are the high-water mark of the epistles in
which they occur. He must have been a good man and a true friend of whom
so much can be said.
This prayer sets forth the ideal of Christian character. What Paul
desired for his friends in Colossae is what all true Christian hearts
should chiefly desire for those whom they love, and should strive after
and ask for themselves. If we look carefully at these words we shall see
a clear division into parts which stand related to each other as root,
stem, and fourfold branches, or as fountain, undivided stream, and "four
heads" into which this "river" of Christian life "is parted." To be
filled with the knowledge of God's will is the root or fountain-source
of all. From it comes a walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing--the
practical life being the outcome and expression of the inward possession
of the will of God. Then we have four clauses, evidently co-ordinate,
each beginning with a participle, and together presenting an analysis of
this worthy walk. It will be fruitful in all outward work. It will be
growing in all inward knowledge of God. Because life is not all doing
and knowing, but is suffering likewise, the worthy walk must be patient
and long-suffering, because strengthened by God Himself. And to crown
all, above work and knowledge and suffering it must be thankfulness to
the Father. The magnificent massing together of the grounds of gratitude
which follows, we must leave for future consideration, and pause,
however abruptly, yet not illogically, at the close of the enumeration
of these four branches of the tree, the four sides of the firm tower of
the true Christian life.
I. Consider the Fountain or Root of all Christian character--"that ye
may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and
understanding."
One or two remarks in the nature of verbal exposition may be desirable.
Generally speaking, the thing desired is the perfecting of the
Colossians in religious knowledge, and the perfection is forcibly
expressed in three different aspects. The idea of completeness up to the
height of their capacity is given in the prayer that they may be
"filled," like some jar charged with sparkling water to the brim. The
advanced degree of the knowledge desired for them is given in the word
here employed, which is a favourite in the Epistles of the Captivity,
and means additional or mature knowledge, that deeper apprehension of
God's truth which perhaps had become more obvious to Paul in the quiet
growth of his spirit during his life in Rome. And the rich variety of
forms which that advanced knowledge would assume is set forth by the
final words of the clause, which may either be connected with its first
words, so meaning "filled ... so that ye may abound in ... wisdom and
understanding;" or with "the knowledge of His will," so meaning a
"knowledge which is manifested in." That knowledge will blossom out into
_every kind_ of "wisdom" and "understanding," two words which it is hard
to distinguish, but of which the former is perhaps the more general and
the latter the more special, the former the more theoretical and the
latter the more practical: and both are the work of the Divine Spirit
whose sevenfold perfection of gifts illuminates with perfect light each
waiting heart. So perfect, whether in regard to its measure, its
maturity, or its manifoldness, is the knowledge of the will of God,
which the Apostle regards as the deepest good which his love can ask for
these Colossians.
Passing by many thoughts suggested by the words, we may touch one or two
large principles which they involve. The first is, that the foundation
of all Christian character and conduct is laid in the knowledge of the
will of God. Every revelation of God is a law. What it concerns us to
know is not abstract truth, or a revelation for speculative thought,
but God's _will_. He does not show Himself to us in order merely that we
may know, but in order that, knowing, we may do, and, what is more than
either knowing or doing, in order that we may be. No revelation from God
has accomplished its purpose when a man has simply understood it, but
every fragmentary flash of light which comes from Him in nature and
providence, and still more the steady radiance that pours from Jesus, is
meant indeed to teach us how we should think of God, but to do that
mainly as a means to the end that we may live in conformity with His
will. The light is knowledge, but it is a light to guide our feet,
knowledge which is meant to shape practice.
If that had been remembered, two opposite errors would have been
avoided. The error that was threatening the Colossian Church, and has
haunted the Church in general ever since, was that of fancying
Christianity to be merely a system of truth to be believed, a rattling
skeleton of abstract dogmas, very many and very dry. An unpractical
heterodoxy was their danger. An unpractical orthodoxy is as real a
peril. You may swallow all the creeds bodily, you may even find in God's
truth the food of very sweet and real feeling: but neither knowing nor
feeling is enough. The one all-important question for us is--does our
Christianity _work_? It is knowledge of His _will_, which becomes an
ever active force in our lives! Any other kind of religious knowledge is
windy food; as Paul says, it "puffeth up;" the knowledge which feeds the
soul with wholesome nourishment is the knowledge of His _will_.
The converse error to that of unpractical knowledge, that of an
unintelligent practice, is quite as bad. There is always a class of
people, and they are unusually numerous to-day, who profess to attach no
importance to Christian doctrines, but to put all the stress on
Christian morals. They swear by the "Sermon on the Mount," and are blind
to the deep doctrinal basis laid in that "sermon" itself, on which its
lofty moral teaching is built. What God hath joined together, let no man
put asunder. Why pit the parent against the child? why wrench the
blossom from its stem? Knowledge is sound when it moulds conduct. Action
is good when it is based on knowledge. The knowledge of God is wholesome
when it shapes the life. Morality has a basis which makes it vigorous
and permanent when it rests upon the knowledge of His will.
Again: Progress in knowledge is the law of the Christian life. There
should be a continual advancement in the apprehension of God's will,
from that first glimpse which saves, to the mature knowledge which Paul
here desires for his friends. The progress does not consist in leaving
behind old truths, but in a profounder conception of what is contained
in these truths. How differently a Fijian just saved, and a Paul on
earth, or a Paul in heaven, look at that verse, "God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son"! The truths which are dim to the
one, like stars seen through a mist, blaze to the other like the same
stars to an eye that has travelled millions of leagues nearer them, and
sees them to be suns. The law of the Christian life is continuous
increase in the knowledge of the depths that lie in the old truths, and
of their far-reaching applications. We are to grow in knowledge of the
Christ by coming ever nearer to Him, and learning more of the infinite
meaning of our earliest lesson that He is the Son of God who has died
for us. The constellations that burn in our nightly sky looked down on
Chaldean astronomers, but though these are the same, how much more is
known about them at Greenwich than was dreamed at Babylon!