The purpose and outcome of this full knowledge of the will of God in
Christ is to "walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing." By "walk" is
of course meant the whole active life; so that the principle is brought
out here very distinctly, that the last result of knowledge of the
Divine will is an outward life regulated by that will. And the sort of
life which such knowledge leads to, is designated in most general terms
as "worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing," in which we have set forth
two aspects of the true Christian life.
"Worthily of the Lord!" The "Lord" here, as generally, is Christ, and
"worthily" seems to mean, in a manner corresponding to what Christ is to
us, and has done for us. We find other forms of the same thought in such
expressions as "worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called" (Eph.
iv. 1), "worthily of saints" (Rom. xvi. 2), "worthy of the gospel"
(Phil. i. 27), "worthily of God" (1 Thess. ii. 12), in all of which
there is the idea of a standard to which the practical life is to be
conformed. Thus the Apostle condenses into one word all the manifold
relations in which we stand to Christ, and all the multifarious
arguments for a holy life which they yield.
These are mainly two. The Christian should "walk" in a manner
corresponding to what Christ has done for him. "Do ye thus requite the
Lord, O foolish people, and unwise?" was the mournful wondering question
of the dying Moses to his people, as he summed up the history of
unbroken tenderness and love on the one side, and of disloyalty almost
as uninterrupted on the other. How much more pathetically and
emphatically might the question be asked of us! We say that we are not
our own, but bought with a price. Then how do we repay that costly
purchase? Do we not requite His blood and tears, His unquenchable,
unalterable love, with a little tepid love which grudges sacrifices and
has scarcely power enough to influence conduct at all, with a little
trembling faith which but poorly corresponds to His firm promises, with
a little reluctant obedience? The richest treasure of heaven has been
freely lavished for us, and we return a sparing expenditure of our
hearts and ourselves, repaying fine gold with tarnished copper, and the
flood of love from the heart of Christ with a few niggard drops
grudgingly squeezed from ours. Nothing short of complete self-surrender,
perfect obedience, and unwavering unfaltering love can characterize the
walk that corresponds with our profound obligations to Him. Surely there
can be no stronger cord with which to bind us as sacrifices to the horns
of the altar than the cords of love. This is the unique glory and power
of Christian ethics, that it brings in this tender personal element to
transmute the coldness of duty into the warmth of gratitude, so throwing
rosy light over the snowy summits of abstract virtue. Repugnant duties
become tokens of love, pleasant as every sacrifice made at its bidding
ever is. The true Christian spirit says: Thou hast given Thyself wholly
for me: help me to yield myself to Thee. Thou hast loved me perfectly:
help me to love Thee with all my heart.
The other side of this conception of a worthy walk is, that the
Christian should act in a manner corresponding to Christ's character and
conduct. We profess to be His by sacredest ties: then we should set our
watches by that dial, being conformed to His likeness, and in all our
daily life trying to do as He has done, or as we believe He would do if
He were in our place. Nothing less than the effort to tread in His
footsteps is a walk worthy of the Lord. All unlikeness to His pattern is
a dishonour to Him and to ourselves. It is neither worthy of the Lord,
nor of the vocation wherewith we are called, nor of the name of saints.
Only when these two things are brought about in my experience--when the
glow of His love melts my heart and makes it flow down in answering
affection, and when the beauty of His perfect life stands ever before
me, and though it be high above me, is not a despair, but a stimulus and
a hope--only then do I "walk worthy of the Lord."
Another thought as to the nature of the life in which the knowledge of
the Divine will should issue, is expressed in the other clause--"unto
all pleasing," which sets forth the great aim as being to please Christ
in everything. That is a strange purpose to propose to men, as the
supreme end to be ever kept in view, to satisfy Jesus Christ by their
conduct. To make the good opinion of men our aim is to be slaves; but to
please this Man ennobles us, and exalts life. Who or what is He, whose
judgment of us is thus all-important, whose approbation is praise
indeed, and to win whose smile is a worthy object for which to use life,
or even to lose it? We should ask ourselves, Do we make it our ever
present object to satisfy Jesus Christ? We are not to mind about other
people's approbation. We can do without that. We are not to hunt after
the good word of our fellows. Every life into which that craving for
man's praise and good opinion enters is tarnished by it. It is a canker,
a creeping leprosy, which eats sincerity and nobleness and strength out
of a man. Let us not care to trim our sails to catch the shifting winds
of this or that man's favour and eulogium, but look higher and say,
"With me it is a very small matter to be judged of man's judgment." "I
appeal unto Caesar." He, the true Commander and Emperor, holds our fate
in His hands; we have to please Him and Him only. There is no thought
which will so reduce the importance of the babble around us, and teach
us such brave and wholesome contempt for popular applause, and all the
strife of tongues, as the constant habit of trying to act as ever in our
great Taskmaster's eye. What does it matter who praise, if He frowns? or
who blame, if His face lights with a smile? No thought will so spur us
to diligence, and make all life solemn and grand as the thought that "we
labour, that whether present or absent, we may be well pleasing to Him."
Nothing will so string the muscles for the fight, and free us from being
entangled with the things of this life, as the ambition to "please Him
who has called us to be soldiers."
Men have willingly flung away their lives for a couple of lines of
praise in a despatch, or for a smile from some great commander. Let us
try to live and die so as to get "honourable mention" from our captain.
Praise from His lips is praise indeed. We shall not know how much it is
worth, till the smile lights His face, and the love comes into His eyes,
as He looks at us, and says, "Well done! good and faithful servant."
III. We have finally the fourfold streams or branches into which this
general conception of Christian character parts itself.
There are four participial clauses here, which seem all to stand on one
level, and to present an analysis in more detail of the component parts
of this worthy walk. In general terms it is divided into fruitfulness in
work, increase in knowledge, strength for suffering, and, as the climax
of all, thankfulness.
The first element is--"bearing fruit in every good work." These words
carry us back to what was said in ver. 6 about the fruitfulness of the
gospel. Here the man in whom that word is planted is regarded as the
producer of the fruit, by the same natural transition by which, in our
Lord's Parable of the Sower, the men in whose hearts the seed was sown
are spoken of as themselves on the one hand, bringing no fruit to
perfection, and on the other, bringing forth fruit with patience. The
worthy walk will be first manifested in the production of a rich variety
of forms of goodness. All profound knowledge of God, and all lofty
thoughts of imitating and pleasing Christ, are to be tested at last by
their power to make men good, and that not after any monotonous type,
nor on one side of their nature only.
One plain principle implied here is that the only true fruit is
goodness. We may be busy, as many a man in our great commercial cities
is busy, from Monday morning till Saturday night for a long lifetime,
and may have had to build bigger barns for our "fruits and our goods,"
and yet, in the high and solemn meaning of the word here, our life may
be utterly empty and fruitless. Much of our work and of its results is
no more fruit than the galls on the oak-leaves are. They are a swelling
from a puncture made by an insect, a sign of disease, not of life. The
only sort of work which can be called fruit, in the highest meaning of
the word, is that which corresponds to a man's whole nature and
relations; and the only work which does so correspond is a life of
loving service of God, which cultivates all things lovely and of good
report. Goodness, therefore, alone deserves to be called fruit--as for
all the rest of our busy lives, they and their toils are like the
rootless, lifeless chaff that is whirled out of the threshing-floor by
every gust. A life which has not in it holiness and loving obedience,
however richly productive it may be in lower respects, is in inmost
reality blighted and barren, and is "nigh unto burning." Goodness is
fruit; all else is nothing but leaves.
Again: the Christian life is to be "fruitful in _every_ good work." This
tree is to be like that in the apocalyptic vision, which "bare twelve
manner of fruits," yielding every month a different sort. So we should
fill the whole circuit of the year with various holiness, and seek to
make widely different forms of goodness our own. We have all certain
kinds of excellence which are more natural and easier for us than
others are. We should seek to cultivate the kind which is hardest for
us. The thorn stock of our own character should bear not only grapes,
but figs too, and olives as well, being grafted upon the true
olive-tree, which is Christ. Let us aim at this all-round and multiform
virtue, and not be like a scene for a stage, all gay and bright on one
side, and dirty canvas and stretchers hung with cobwebs on the other.
The second element in the analysis of the true Christian life
is--"increasing in the knowledge of God." The figure of the tree is
probably continued here. If it fruits, its girth will increase, its
branches will spread, its top will mount, and next year its shadow on
the grass will cover a larger circle. Some would take the "knowledge"
here as the instrument or means of growth, and would render "increasing
by the knowledge of God," supposing that the knowledge is represented as
the rain or the sunshine which minister to the growth of the plant. But
perhaps it is better to keep to the idea conveyed by the common
rendering, which regards the words "in knowledge" as the specification
of that region in which the growth enjoined is to be realized. So here
we have the converse of the relation between work and knowledge which we
met in the earlier part of the chapter. There, knowledge led to a worthy
walk; here, fruitfulness in good works leads to, or at all events is
accompanied with, an increased knowledge. And both are true. These two
work on each other a reciprocal increase. All true knowledge which is
not mere empty notions, naturally tends to influence action, and all
true action naturally tends to confirm the knowledge from which it
proceeds. Obedience gives insight: "If any man wills to do My will, he
shall know of the doctrine." If I am faithful up to the limits of my
present knowledge, and have brought it all to bear on character and
conduct, I shall find that in the effort to make my every thought a
deed, there have fallen from my eyes as it were scales, and I see some
things clearly which were faint and doubtful before. Moral truth becomes
dim to a bad man. Religious truth grows bright to a good one, and
whosoever strives to bring all his creed into practice, and all his
practice under the guidance of his creed, will find that the path of
obedience is the path of growing light.
Then comes the third element in this resolution of the Christian
character into its component parts--"strengthened with all power,
according to the might of His glory, unto all patience and longsuffering
with joyfulness." Knowing and doing are not the whole of life: there are
sorrow and suffering too.
Here again we have the Apostle's favourite "_all_," which occurs so
frequently in this connection. As he desired for the Colossians, _all_
wisdom, unto _all_ pleasing, and fruitfulness in _every_ good work, so
he prays for _all_ power to strengthen them. Every kind of strength
which God can give and man can receive, is to be sought after by us,
that we may be "girded with strength," cast like a brazen wall all round
our human weakness. And that Divine power is to flow into us, having
this for its measure and limit--"the might of His glory." His "glory" is
the lustrous light of His self-revelation; and the far-flashing energy
revealed in that self-manifestation is the immeasurable measure of the
strength that may be ours. True, a finite nature can never contain the
infinite, but man's finite nature is capable of indefinite expansion.
Its elastic walls stretch to contain the increasing gift. The more we
desire, the more we receive, and the more we receive, the more we are
able to receive. The amount which filled our hearts to-day should not
fill them to-morrow. Our capacity is at each moment the working limit of
the measure of the strength given us. But it is always shifting, and may
be continually increasing. The only real limit is "the might of His
glory," the limitless omnipotence of the self-revealing God. To that we
may indefinitely approach, and till we have exhausted God we have not
reached the furthest point to which we should aspire.
And what exalted mission is destined for this wonderful communicated
strength? Nothing that the world thinks great: only helping some lone
widow to stay her heart in patience, and flinging a gleam of brightness,
like sunrise on a stormy sea, over some tempest-tossed life. The
strength is worthily employed and absorbed in producing "all patience
and longsuffering with joy." Again the favourite "all" expresses the
universality of the patience and longsuffering. Patience here is not
merely passive endurance. It includes the idea of perseverance in the
right course, as well as that of uncomplaining bearing of evil. It is
the "steering right onward," without bating one jot of heart or hope;
the temper of the traveller who struggles forward, though the wind in
his face dashes the sleet in his eyes, and he has to wade through deep
snow. While "patience" regards the evil mainly as sent by God, and as
making the race set before us difficult, "longsuffering" describes the
temper under suffering when considered as a wrong or injury done by man.
And whether we think of our afflictions in the one or the other light,
God's strength will steal into our hearts, if we will, not merely to
help us to bear them with perseverance and with meekness as unruffled as
Christ's, but to crown both graces--as the clouds are sometimes rimmed
with flashing gold--with a great light of joy. That is the highest
attainment of all. "Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." Flowers beneath
the snow, songs in the night, fire burning beneath the water, "peace
subsisting at the heart of endless agitation," cool airs in the very
crater of Vesuvius--all these paradoxes may be surpassed in our hearts
if they are strengthened with all might by an indwelling Christ.
The crown of all, the last of the elements of the Christian character,
is thankfulness--"giving thanks unto the Father." This is the summit of
all; and is to be diffused through all. All our progressive fruitfulness
and insight, as well as our perseverance and unruffled meekness in
suffering, should have a breath of thankfulness breathed through them.
We shall see the grand enumeration of the reasons for thankfulness in
the next verses. Here we pause for the present, with this final
constituent of the life which Paul desired for the Colossian Christians.
Thankfulness should mingle with all our thoughts and feelings, like the
fragrance of some perfume penetrating through the common scentless air.
It should embrace all events. It should be an operating motive in all
actions. We should be clear-sighted and believing enough to be thankful
for pain and disappointment and loss. That gratitude will add the
crowning consecration to service and knowledge and endurance. It will
touch our spirits to the finest of all issues, for it will lead to glad
self-surrender, and make of our whole life a sacrifice of praise. "I
beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies a living sacrifice." Our lives will then exhale in fragrance and
shoot up in flashing tongues of ruddy light and beauty, when kindled
into a flame of gratitude by the glow of Christ's great love. Let us lay
our poor selves on that altar, as sacrifices of thanksgiving; for with
such sacrifices God is well-pleased.