Remember that this prayer or wish of my text was spoken in reference to
brethren; that is to say, to those who, by the hypothesis, already
possessed Christian faith. And Paul wishes for them, and can wish for
them, nothing better and more than the increase and continuousness of
that which they already possess. The highest blessing that the brethren
can receive is the enlargement and the strengthening of their faith.
Now we talk so much in Christian teaching about this 'faith' that, I
fancy, like a worn sixpence in a man's pocket, its very circulation from
hand to hand has worn off the lettering. And many of us, from the very
familiarity of the word, have only a dim conception of what it means. It
may not be profitless, then, to remind you, first of all, that this
faith is neither more nor less than a very familiar thing which you are
constantly exercising in reference to one another--that is to say,
simple confidence. You trust your husband, your wife, your child, your
parent, your friend, your guide, your lawyer, your doctor, your banker.
Take that very same emotion and attitude of the mind by which you put
your well-being, in different aspects and provinces, into the hands of
men and women round about you; lift the trailing flowers that go all
straggling along the ground, and twine them round the pillars of God's
throne, and you get the confidence, the trust, of the praises and
glories of which the New Testament is full. There is nothing mysterious
in it, it is simply the exercise of confidence, the familiar cement that
binds all human relationship together, and makes men brotherly and
kindred with their kind. Faith is trust, and trust saves a man's soul.
Then, remember further that the faith which is the foundation of
everything is essentially personal trust reposing upon a person, upon
Jesus Christ. You cannot get hold of a man in any other way than by
that. The only real bond that binds people together is the personal bond
of confidence, manifesting itself in love. And it is no mere doctrine
that we present for a man's faith, but it is the person about whom the
doctrine speaks. We say, indeed, that we can only know the person on
whom we must trust by the revelation of the truths concerning Him which
make the Christian doctrines; but a man may believe the whole of them,
and have no faith. And what is the step in advance which is needed in
order to turn credence into faith--belief in a doctrine into trust? In
one view it is the step from the doctrine to the person. When you grasp
Christ, the living Christ, and not merely the doctrine, for yours, then
you have faith.
Only remember, my brother, if you say you trust Christ, the question has
immediately to be asked: What Christ is it that you are trusting? Is it
the Christ that died for your sins on the Cross, or is it a Christ that
taught you some great moral truths and set you a lovely example of life
and conduct? Which of the two is it? for these two Christs are very
different, and the faith that grasps the one is extremely unlike the
faith that grasps the other. And so I press upon you this question: What
Christ is it to Whom your confidence turns, and for what is it that you
are looking to Him? Is it for help and guidance of some vague kind; is
it for pattern or example, or is it for the salvation of your sinful
souls, by the might of His great sacrifice?
Then, remember still further, that this personal outgoing of confidence,
which is the action both of a man's will and of a man's intellect, to
the person revealed to us in the great doctrines of the Gospel--that
this faith, if it is to be worth anything, must be continuous. Paul
could desire nothing better for his Ephesian friends than that they
should have that which they had--faith; that they should continue to
have it, and that it should be perennial and increasing all through
their lives. You can no more get present good from past faith than the
breath you drew yesterday into your lungs will be sufficient to
oxygenate your blood at this moment. As soon as you break the electric
contact, the electric light goes out, and no matter how long a man has
been living a life of faith, that past life will not in the smallest
degree help him at the present moment unless the faith is continuous.
Remember this, then, a broken faith is a broken peace; a broken faith is
a broken salvation; and so long, and only so long, as you are knit to
Jesus Christ by the conscious exercise of a faith realised at the
moment, are you in the reception of blessing from Him at the moment.
And, still further, this faith ought to be progressive. So Paul desired
it to be with these people. If there is no growth, do you think there is
much life? I know I am speaking to plenty of people who call themselves
Christians, whose faith is not one inch better to-day than it was when
it was born--perhaps a little less rather than more. Oh! the hundreds
and thousands of professing Christians, average Christians, that clog
and weaken all churches, whose faith has no progressive element in it,
and is not a bit stronger by all the discipline of life and by their
experience of its power. Brethren! is it so with us? Let us ask
ourselves that; and let us ask very solemnly this other question: If my
faith has no growth, how do I know that it has got any life?
And so let me remind you further that this faith, the personal outgoing
of a man's intellect and will to the personal Saviour revealed in the
Scriptures as the sacrifice for our sins, and the life of our spirits,
which ought to be continuous and progressive, is the foundation of all
strength, blessedness, goodness, in a human character; and if we have it
we have the germ of all possible excellence and growth, not because of
what it is in itself, for in itself it is nothing more than the opening
of the heart to the reception of the celestial influences of grace and
righteousness that He pours down. And, therefore, this is the thing that
a wise man will most desire for himself, and for those that are dearest
to him.
Depend upon it, whether it is what we want most or not, it is what God
wants most for us. He does not care nearly so much that our lives should
be joyful as that they should be righteous and full of faith; and He
subjects us to many a sorrow and loss and disappointment in order that
the life of nature may be broken and the life of faith may be strong. If
we rightly understand the relative value of outward and of inward
things, we shall be thankful for the storms that drive us nearer to Him;
for the darkening earth that may make the pillar of cloud glow at the
heart into a pillar of fire, and for all the discipline, painful though
it may be, with which God answers the prayer, 'Lord, increase our
faith.'
II. And now, next, notice how inseparably associated with a true faith
is love.
The one is effect that never is found without its cause; the other is
cause which never but produces its effect. These two are braided
together by the Apostle as inseparable in reality and inseparable in
thought. And that it is so is plain enough, and there follow from it
some practical lessons that I desire to lay upon your hearts and my own.
There are, then, here two principles, or rather two sides of one
thought; no faith without love, no love without faith.
No faith is genuine and deep which does not at once produce in the heart
where it is lodged an answering love to God. That is clear enough. Faith
is, as I have said, the recognition and the reception of the divine love
into the heart; and we are so constituted as that if a man once knows
and believes in any real sense the love that God has to him, he answers
it back again with his love as certainly as an echo which gives back the
sound that reaches it.
Our faith is, if I may so say, like a burning-glass, which concentrates
the rays of the divine love upon our hearts, and focuses them into a
point that kindles our hearts into flame. If we have the confidence that
God loves us, in any real depth, we shall answer by the gush of our love
to Him.
And so here is a test for men's faith. You call yourselves Christians.
If I were to come to you and ask you, 'Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ?' most of you would say, 'Yes!' Try your faith, my friend, by
this test: Does it make you love Him at all? If it does not, it is more
words than anything else; and it needs a wonderful deepening before it
can have any real power in your hearts. There is no faith worthy the
name unless its child, all but as old as itself, be the answer of the
heart to Him, pouring itself out in thankful gratitude.
No love without faith; 'we love Him because He first loved us.' God must
begin, we can only come second. Man's natural selfishness is only
overcome by the clearest demonstration of the love of God to him; and
until that love, in its superbest because its lowliest form, the form of
the sacrifice on the Cross, has penetrated into a man's heart through
his faith, there will be no love.
So then, dear friends, there is a test for your love. We hear a great
deal said nowadays, as there has always been a great deal said, about
the essence of all religion consisting in love to God; and about men
'rejecting the cumbrous dogmas of the New Testament, and falling back
upon the great and simple truths, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with
all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself,' and saying 'that is
their religion.' Well, I venture to say that without the faith of the
heart in, not the cumbrous dogmas, but the central fact of the New
Testament, that Christ died on the Cross for me, you will never get the
old commandment of love to God with heart and soul and strength and mind
really kept and carried out; and that if you want men to have their
hearts and wills bound into loving fellowship with God, it is only by
the path of faith in Him who is the sacrifice for sin that such
fellowship is reached. Hence there follows a very plain, practical
advice. Do you want your heart's love to be increased? Learn the way to
do it. You cannot work yourselves into a fervour of religious emotion of
any valuable kind. A man cannot get to love more by saying, 'I am
determined I will.' We have no direct control over our affections in
that fashion. You cannot make water boil except by one way, and that is
by putting plenty of fire under it; and you cannot make your affections
melt and flow except by heating them by the contemplation of the truth
which is intended to bring them out. That is to say, the more we
exercise our minds on the contemplation of Christ's great love to us,
and the more we put forth the energies of our souls in the act of
simple self-distrust and reliance upon Him, the more will our love be
fervent and strong. You can only increase love by increasing the faith
from which it comes. So do you see to it, if you call yourselves
Christians, that you try to deepen all your Christian affections by an
honest, meditative, prayerful contemplation and grasp of the great love
of God in Jesus Christ. And do not wonder if your Christian life be, as
it is in so many of us, stunted, not progressive, bringing no blessing
to ourselves and little good to anybody else. The explanation is easy
enough. You do not look at the Cross of Christ, nor live in the
contemplation and reception of His great grace.
III. And now, lastly, these two inseparably associated graces of faith
and love bring with them, and lead to, the third--peace.
It seems to be but a very modest, sober-tinted wish which the Apostle
here has for his brethren that the highest and best thing he can ask for
them is only quiet. Very modest by the side of joy and excitement, in
their coats of many colours, and yet the deepest and truest blessing
that any of us can have--peace. It comes to us by one path, and that is
by the path of faith and love.
These two bring peace with God, peace in our inmost spirits, the peace
of self-annihilation and submission, the peace of obedience, the peace
of ceasing from our own works, and entering, therefore, into the rest of
God. Trust is peace. There is no tranquillity like that of feeling 'I am
not responsible for this: He is; and I rest myself on Him.'
Love is peace. There is no rest for our hearts but on the bosom of some
one that is dear to us, and in whom we can confide. But ah, brother!
every tree in which the dove nestles is felled down sooner or later, and
the nest torn to pieces, and the bird flies away. But if we turn
ourselves to the undying Christ, the perpetual revelation of the eternal
God, then, then our love and our faith will bring us rest. There will be
peace in trusting Him whom we never can trust and be put to shame. There
will be peace in loving Him who is more than worthy of and able to repay
the deep and perennial love of all hearts.
Self-surrender is peace. It is our wills that trouble us. Disturbance
comes, not from without, but from within. When the will bows, when I
say, 'Be it then as Thou wilt,' when in faith and love I cease to
strive, to murmur, to rebel, to repine, and enter into His loving
purposes, then there is peace.
Obedience is peace. To recognise a great will that is sovereign, and to
bow myself to it, not because it is sovereign, but because it is sweet,
and sweet because I love it, and love Him whose it is--that is peace.
And then, whatever may be outward circumstances, there shall be 'peace
subsisting at the heart of endless agitation'; and deep in my soul I may
be tranquil, though all about me may be the hurly-burly of the storm.
The Christian peace is an armed peace, paradoxical as it appears; and
according to the great word of the Apostle, is a sentry which garrisons
the beleaguered heart and mind, surrounded by many foes, and keeps them
in Christ Jesus.
'There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked,' he is 'as a troubled
sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt'; but over the
wildest commotion one Voice, low, gentle, omnipotent, says: 'Peace! be
still!' and the heart quiets itself, though there may be a ground
swell, and the weather clears. He is your peace, trust Him, love Him,
and you cannot but possess the 'peace of God which passeth
understanding.'