'That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things, may abound to
every good work.'
That is what God gives us His grace for; and that is a very important
consideration. The end of God's dealings with us, poor, weak, sinful
creatures, is character and conduct. Of course you can state the end in
a great many other ways; but there have been terrible evils arising from
the way in which Evangelical preachers have too often talked, as if the
end of God's dealings with us was the vague thing which they call
'salvation,' and by which many of their hearers take them to mean
neither more nor less than dodging Hell. But the New Testament, with all
its mysticism, even when it soars highest, and speaks most about the
perfection of humanity, and the end of God's dealings being that we may
be 'filled with the fulness of God,' never loses its wholesome, sane
hold of the common moralities of daily life, and proclaims that we
receive all, in order that we may be able to 'maintain good works for
necessary uses.' And if we lay that to heart, and remember that a
correct creed, and a living faith, and precious, select, inward emotions
and experiences are all intended to evolve into lives, filled and
radiant with common moralities and 'good works'--not meaning thereby the
things which go by that name in popular phraseology, but 'whatsoever
things are lovely . . . and of good report'--then we shall understand a
little better what we are here for and what Jesus Christ died for, and
what His Spirit is given and lives in us for. So 'good works' is the
end, in one very important aspect, of all that avalanche of grace which
has been from eternity rushing down upon us from the heights of God.
There is one more thing to note, and that is that, in our character and
conduct, we should copy the 'giving grace.' Look how eloquently and
significantly, in the first and last clauses of my text, the same words
recur. 'God is able to make _all_ grace abound, that ye may _abound_ in
_all_ good work.' Copy God in the many-sidedness and in the copiousness
of the good that flows out from your life and conduct, because of your
possession of that divine grace. And remember, 'to him that hath shall
be given.' We pray for more grace; we need to pray for that, no doubt.
Do we use the grace that God has given us? If we do not, the remainder
of that great word which I have just quoted will be fulfilled in you.
God forbid that any of us should receive the grace of God in vain, and
therefore come under the stern and inevitable sentence, 'From him that
hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath!'