'Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained,
let us walk by the same rule.'--PHIL. iii. 16.
Paul has just been laying down a great principle--viz. that if the main
direction of a life be right, God will reveal to a man the points in
which he is wrong. But that principle is untrue and dangerous, unless
carefully guarded. It may lead to a lazy tolerance of evil, and to
drawing such inferences as, 'Well! it does not much matter about
strenuous effort, if we are right at bottom it will all come right
by-and-by,' and so it may become a pillow for indolence and a clog on
effort. This possible abuse of a great truth seems to strike the
Apostle, and so he enters here, with this 'Nevertheless,' a _caveat_
against that twist of his meaning. It is as if he said, 'Now mind! while
all that is perfectly true, it is true on conditions; and if they be not
attended to, it is not true.' God will reveal to a man the things in
which he is wrong if, and only if, he steadfastly continues in the
course which he knows and sees to be right. Present attainments, then,
are in some sense a standard of duty, and if we honestly and
conscientiously observe that standard we shall get light as we journey.
In this exhortation of the Apostle's there are many exhortations wrapped
up; and in trying to draw them out I venture to adhere to the form of
exhortation for the sake of impressiveness and point.
I. First, then, I would say the Apostle means, 'Live up to your faith
and your convictions.'
It may be a question whether 'that to which we have already attained'
means the amount of knowledge which we have won or the amount of
practical righteousness which we have made our own. But I think that,
instead of sharply dividing between these two, we shall follow more in
the course of the Apostle's thought if we unite them together, and
remember that the Bible does not make the distinct separation which we
sometimes incline to make between knowledge on the one side and practice
on the other, but regards the man as a living unity. And thus, both
aspects of our attainments come into consideration here.
So, then, there are two main thoughts--first, live out your creed, and
second, live up to your convictions.
Live out your creed. Men are meant to live, not by impulse, by accident,
by inclination, but by principle. We are not intended to live by rule,
but we _are_ intended to live by law. And unless we know _why_ we do as
well as _what_ we do, and give a rational account of our conduct, we
fall beneath the height on which God intends us to walk. Impulse is all
very well, but impulse is blind and needs a guide. The imitation of
those around us, or the acceptance of the apparent necessities of
circumstances, are, to some extent, inevitable and right. But to be
driven merely by the force of externals is to surrender the highest
prerogative of manhood. The highest part of human nature is the reason
guided by conscience, and a man's conscience is only then rightly
illuminated when it is illuminated by his creed, which is founded on the
acceptance of the revelation that God has made of Himself.
And whilst we are clearly meant to be guided by the intelligent
appropriation of God's truth, that truth is evidently all meant for
guidance. We are not told anything in the Bible in order that we may
know as an ultimate object, but we are told it all in order that,
knowing, we may be, and, being, we may do, according to His will.
Just think of the intensely practical tendency of all the greatest
truths of Christianity. The Cross is the law of life. The revelation
that was made there was made, not merely that we might cling to it as a
refuge from our sins, but that we might accept it as the rule of our
conduct. All our duties to mankind are summed up in the word 'Love one
another as I have loved you.' We say that we believe in the divinity of
Christ; we say that we believe in the great incarnation and sacrificial
death and eternal priesthood of the loving Son of God. We say that we
believe in a judgment to come and a future life. Well, then, do these
truths produce any effect upon my life? have they shaped me in any
measure into conformity with their great principles? Does there issue
from them constraining power which grasps me and moulds me as a sculptor
would a bit of clay in his hands? Am I subject to the Gospel's
authority, and is the word in which God has revealed Himself to me the
word which dominates and impels all my life? 'Whereunto we have already
attained, by the same let us walk.'
But we shall not do that without a distinct effort. For it is a great
deal easier to live from hand to mouth than to live by principle. It is
a great deal easier to accept what seems forced upon us by circumstances
than to exercise control over the circumstances, and make them bend to
God's holy will. It is a great deal easier to take counsel of
inclination, and to put the reins in the hands of impulses, passions,
desires, tastes, or even habits, than it is, at each fresh moment, to
seek for fresh impulses from a fresh illumination from the ancient and
yet ever fresh truth. The old kings of France used to be kept with all
royal state in the palace, but they were not allowed to do anything. And
there was a rough, unworshipped man that stood by their side, and who
was the real ruler of the realm. That is what a great many professing
Christians do with their creeds. They instal them in some inner chamber
that they very seldom visit, and leave them there, in dignified
idleness, and the real working ruler of their lives is found elsewhere.
Let us see to it, brethren, that all our thoughts are incarnated in our
deeds, and that all our deeds are brought into immediate connection with
the great principles of God's word. Live by that law, and we live at
liberty.
And, then, remember that this translating of creed into conduct is the
only condition of growing illumination. When we act upon a belief, the
belief grows. That is the source of a great deal of stupid obstinacy in
this world, because men have been so long accustomed to go upon certain
principles that it seems incredible to them but that these principles
should be true. But that, too, is at the bottom of a great deal of
intelligent and noble firmness of adherence to the true. A man who has
tested a principle because he has lived upon it has confidence in it
that nobody else can have.
Projectors may have beautiful specifications with attractive pictures of
their new inventions; they look very well upon paper, but we must see
them working before we are sure of their worth. And so, here is this
great body of Divine truth, which assumes to be sufficient for guidance,
for conduct, for comfort, for life. Live upon it, and thereby your grasp
of it and your confidence in it will be immensely increased. And no man
has a right to say 'I have rejected Christianity as untrue,' unless he
has put it to the test by living upon it; and if he has, he will never
say it. A Swiss traveller goes into a shop and buys a brand-new
alpenstock. Does he lean upon it with as much confidence as another man
does, who has one with the names of all the mountains that it has helped
him up branded on it from top to bottom? Take _this_ staff and lean on
it. Live your creed, and you will believe your creed as you never will
until you do. Obedience takes a man up to an elevation from which he
sees further into the deep harmonies of truth. In all regions of life
the principle holds good: 'To him that hath shall be given.' And it
holds eminently in reference to our grasp of Christian principles. Use
them and they grow; neglect them and they perish. Sometimes a man dies
in a workhouse who has a store of guineas and notes wrapped up in rags
somewhere about him; and so they have been of no use to him. If you want
your capital to increase, trade with it. As the Lord said when He gave
the servants their talents: 'Trade with them till I come.' The creed
that is utilised is the creed that grows. And that is why so many of you
Christian people have so little real intellectual grasp of the
principles of Christianity, because you have not lived upon them, nor
tried to do it.
And, in like manner, another side of this thought is, be true to your
convictions. There is no such barrier to a larger and wholesomer view of
our duty as the neglect of anything that plainly is our duty. It stands
there, an impassable cliff between us and all progress. Let us live and
be what we know we ought to be, and we shall know better what we ought
to be at the next moment.
II. Secondly, let me put the Apostle's meaning in another exhortation,
Go on as you have begun.
'Whereunto we have already attained, by the same let us walk.' The
various points to which the men have reached are all points in one
straight line; and the injunction of my text is 'Keep the road.' There
are a great many temptations to stray from it. There are nice smooth
grassy bits by the side of it where it is a great deal easier walking.
There are attractive things just a footstep or two out of the path--such
a little deviation that it can easily be recovered. And so, like
children gathering daisies in the field, we stray away from the path;
and, like men on a moor, we then look round for it, and it is gone. The
angle of divergence may be the acutest possible; the deviation when we
begin may be scarcely visible, but if you draw a line at the sharpest
angle and the least deviation from a straight line, and carry it out far
enough, there will be space between it and the line from which it
started ample to hold a universe. Then, let us take care of small
deviations from the plain straight path, and give no heed to the
seductions that lie on either side, but 'whereunto we have already
attained, by _the same_ let us walk.'
There are temptations, too, to slacken our speed. The river runs far
more slowly in its latter course than when it came babbling and leaping
down the hillside. And sometimes a Christian life seems as if it crept
rather than ran, like those sluggish streams in the Fen country, which
move so slowly that you cannot tell which way the water is flowing. Are
not there all round us, are there not amongst ourselves instances of
checked growth, of arrested development? There are people listening to
me now, calling themselves--and I do not say that they have not a right
to do so--Christians, who have not grown a bit for years, but stand at
the very same point of attainment, both in knowledge and in purity and
Christlikeness, as they were many, many days ago. I beseech you, listen
to this exhortation of my text, 'Whereunto we have already attained, by
the same let us walk,' and continue patient and persistent in the course
that is set before us.