'According to His working, which worketh in me mightily.' I need not
discuss whether 'His' in my text refers to God or to Christ. The thing
meant is the operation upon the Christian spirit, of that Divine Spirit
whose descent the Church to-day commemorates. At this stage of my sermon
I can only remind you in a word, first of all, that the Apostle here is
arrogating to himself no special or peculiar gift, is not egotistically
setting forth something which he possessed and other Christian people
did not--that power which, 'working in him mightily,' worked in all his
brethren as well. It was his conviction and his teaching--would that it
were more operatively and vitally the conviction of all professing
Christians to-day, and would that it were more conspicuously, and in due
proportion to the rest of Christian truth, the teaching of all Christian
teachers to-day!--that that Divine power is in the very act of faith
received and implanted in every believing soul. 'Know ye not,' the
Apostle could say to his hearers, 'that ye have the Spirit of God,
except ye be reprobates.' I doubt whether the affirmative response would
spring to the lips of all professing or real Christians to-day as
swiftly as it would have done then. And I cannot help feeling, and
feeling with increasing gravity of pressure as the days go on, that the
thing that our churches, and we as individuals, perhaps need most
to-day, is the replacing of that great truth--I do not call it a
'doctrine,' that is cold, it is experience--in its proper place. They
who believe on Him do receive a new life, a supernatural communication
of the new Spirit, to be the very power that rules in their lives.
It is an inward gift. It is not like the help that men can render us,
given from without and apprehended and incorporated with ourselves
through the medium of the understanding or of the heart. There is an old
story in the history of Israel about a young king that was bid by the
prophet to bend his bow against the enemies of Israel, as a symbol; and
the old prophet put his withered, skinny brown hand on the young man's
fleshy one, and then said to him, 'Shoot.' But this Divine Spirit comes
to strengthen us in a more intimate and blessed fashion than that, for
it glides into our hearts and dwells in our spirits, and our work, as
my text says, is His working. This 'working within' is stated in the
original of my text most emphatically, for it is literally 'the
inworking which inworketh in me mightily.'
So, dear brethren, the first direct aim of all our endeavour ought to be
to receive and to keep and to increase our gift of that Divine Spirit.
The work and the striving of which my text speaks would be sheer slavery
unless we had that help. It would be impossible of accomplishment unless
we had it.
'If any power we have, it is to ill,
And all the power is Thine, to do and eke to will.'
Let us, then, begin our endeavour, not by working, but by receiving. Is
not that the very meaning of the doctrine that we are always talking
about, that men are saved, not by works but by faith? Does not that mean
that the first step is reception, and the first requisite is
receptiveness, and that then, and after that, second and not first, come
working and striving? To keep our hearts open by desire, to keep them
open by purity, are the essentials. The dove will not come into a fouled
nest. It is said that they forsake polluted places. But also we have to
use the power which is inwrought. Use is the way to increase all gifts,
from the muscle in your arm to the Christian life in your spirit. Use
it, and it grows. Neglect it, and it vanishes, and like the old Jewish
heroes, a man may go forth to exercise himself as of old time, and know
not that the Spirit of God hath departed from him. Dear friends, do not
bind yourselves to the slavery of Endeavour, until you come into the
liberty and wealth of receiving. He gives first, and then says to you,
'Now go to work, and keep that good thing which is committed unto
thee.'
There is but one thought more in this last part of my text, which I must
not leave untouched, and that is that this sufficient and universal gift
is not only the means by which the great universal duty can be
discharged, but it ought to be the measure in which it is discharged. 'I
work according to the working in me.' That is, all the force that came
into Paul by that Divine Spirit, came out of Paul in his Christian
conduct, and the gift was not only the source, but also the measure, of
this man's Christian Endeavour. Is that true about us? They say that the
steam-engine is a most wasteful application of power, that a great deal
of the energy which is generated goes without ever doing any work. They
tell us that one of the great difficulties in the way of economic
application of electricity is the loss which comes through using
accumulators. Is not that like a great many of us? So much power poured
into us; so little coming out from us and translated into actual work!
Such a 'rushing mighty wind,' and the air about us so heavy and stagnant
and corrupt! Such a blaze of fire, and we so cold! Such a cataract of
the river of the water of life, and our lips parched and our crops
seared and worthless! Ah, brethren! when we look at ourselves, and when
we think of the condition of so many of the churches to which we belong,
the old rebuke of the prophet comes back to us in this generation, 'Thou
that art named the House of Israel, is the Spirit of the Lord
straitened? Are these His doings?' We have an all-sufficient power. May
our working and striving be according to it, and may we work mightily,
being 'strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!'