It is perhaps not too artificial to point out that we have here three
triads of which the first describes the life of the Spirit in its
deepest secret; the second, the same life in its manifestations to men;
and the third, that life in relation to the difficulties of the world,
and of ourselves.
The first of these three triads includes love, joy, and peace, and it is
not putting too great a strain on the words to point out that the source
of all three lies in the Christian relation to God. They regard nothing
but God and our relation to Him; they would be all the same if there
were no other men in the world, or if there were no world. We cannot
call them duties or virtues; they are simply the results of communion
with God--the certain manifestations of the better life of the Spirit.
Love, of course, heads the list, as the foundation and moving principle
of all the rest. It is the instinctive act of the higher life and is
shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is the life sap which
rises through the tree and given form to all the clusters. The remaining
two members of this triad are plainly consequences of the first. Joy is
not so much an act or a grace of character as an emotion poured into
men's lives, because in their hearts abides love to God. Jesus Christ
pledged Himself to impart His joy to remain in us, with the issue that
our joy should be full. There is only one source of permanent joy which
takes possession of and fills all the corners and crannies of the heart,
and that is a love towards God equally abiding and all-pervasive. We
have all known joys so perturbed, fragmentary and fleeting, that it is
hard to distinguish them from sorrows, but there is no need that joys
should be like green fruits hard and savourless and ready to drop from
the tree. If God is 'the gladness of our joy,' and all our delights come
from communion with Him, our joy will never pass and will fill the whole
round of our spirits as the sea laves every shore.
Peace will be built upon love and joy, if our hearts are ever turning to
God and ever blessed with the inter-communion of love between Him and
us. What can be strong enough to disturb the tranquillity that fills the
soul independent of all externals? However long and close may be the
siege, the well in the castle courtyard will be full. True peace comes
not from the absence of trouble but from the presence of God, and will
be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we
live in, and partake of, the love of God.
The second triad is long-suffering, kindness, goodness. All these three
obviously refer to the spiritual life in its manifestations to men. The
first of them--long-suffering--describes the attitude of patient
endurance towards inflictors of injury or enemies, if we come forth from
the blessed fellowship with God, where love, joy, and peace reign
unbroken, and are met with a cold gust of indifference or with an icy
wind of hate. The reality of our happy communion and the depth of our
love will be tested by the patience of our long-suffering. Love
suffereth long, is not easily provoked, is not soon angry. He has little
reason to suppose that the love of God is shed abroad in his heart, or
that the Spirit of God is bringing forth fruit in him, who has not got
beyond the stage of repaying hate with hate, and scorn with scorn. Any
fool can answer a fool according to his folly, but it takes a wise and a
good man to overcome evil with good, and to love them that hate; and yet
how certainly the fires of mutual antagonism would go out if there were
only one to pile on the fuel! It takes two to make a quarrel, and no man
living under the influence of the Spirit of God can be one of such a
pair.
The second and third members of this triad--kindness, goodness, slide
very naturally into one another. They do not only require the negative
virtue of not retaliating, but express the Christian attitude towards
all of meeting them, whatever their attitude, with good. It is possible
that kindness here expresses the inward disposition and goodness, the
habitual actions in which that disposition shows itself. If that be the
distinction between them, the former would answer to benevolence and the
latter to beneficence. These three graces include all that Paul presents
as Christian duty to our fellows. The results of the life of the Spirit
are to pass beyond ourselves and to influence our whole conduct. We are
not to live only as mainly for the spiritual enjoyments of fellowship
with God. The true field of religion is in moving amongst men, and the
true basis of all service of men is love and fellowship with God.
The third triad--faithfulness, meekness, temperance--seems to point to
the world in which the Christian life is to be lived as a scene of
difficulties and oppositions. The rendering of the Revised Version is to
be preferred to that of the Authorised in the first of the three, for it
is not faith in its theological sense to which the Apostle is here
referring. Possibly, however, the meaning may be trustfulness just as in
1 Corinthians xiii. it is given as a characteristic of love that it
'believeth all things.' More probably, however, the meaning is
faithfulness, and Paul's thought is that the Christian life is to
manifest itself in the faithful discharge of all duties and the honest
handling of all things committed to it. Meekness even more distinctly
contemplates a condition of things which is contrary to the Christian
life, and points to a submissiveness of spirit which does not lift
itself up against oppositions, but bends like a reed before the storm.
Paul preached meekness and practised it, but Paul could flash into
strong opposition and with a resonant ring in his voice could say 'To
whom we gave place by subjection, No! not for an hour.' The last member
of the triad--temperance--points to the difficulties which the spiritual
life is apt to meet with in the natural passions and desires, and
insists upon the fact that conflict and rigid and habitual self-control
are sure to be marks of that life.