Fruitful in Every Good Work
’ T/iaf ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.” — COLOSSIANS i. lo.
I HE text is a single petition taken from the middle of a prayer; but although it is a part of a larger whole, it is complete in itself, and may without danger or detriment be isolated from the context with a view to more minute inspection and more specific practical use.
I count it of first-rate importance to state distinctly here at the outset, that the prayer in general, as well as this clause in particular, points to those who are already Christians. It speaks not of birth, but of growth. We have to do here not with the raising of the dead, but with the advance of the living. You will fatally miss the apostle’s meaning if you confound the conversion of sinners with the obedience of the renewed. A man has broken a branch from a tree, and stuck it into the ground. As he contemplates his childish handiwork, he overhears a skilful horticulturist instructing his pupils in the art of increasing the growth and fruitfuhiess of trees, — they must be pruned, trained, watered, manured; forthwith the simpleton begins to perform toilsomely all these operations upon his branch, expecting that thereby he will make it fruitful. It never grows fruitful: it withers first, and then rots away. Behold the picture of one who has never passed from death into life under the mighty ministry of the Spirit, and yet strives diligently to adorn his life with a seemly obedience to the law of God. In giving lessons on religion, we must, like our Master with his pupil Nicodemus, begin at the beginning: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The child, whether of the natural or the spiritual family, must live before he grow. The tree, whether in our garden or in God’s, must have a living root beneath the ground ere it can wave fruitful branches in the sky.
This portion of the Word bears on the converted, stimulating them to an increase of spiritual understanding and practical holiness. Assuming that the new life has begun, it proposes to carry that life forward into more vigorous and beneficent exercise. Other texts tell how the dead may live, this text tells how the living may more effectually serve the Lord. Incidentally, indeed, and as a secondary result, the exhibition of a believer’s privilege and duty may pierce the conscience of a prodigal, and induce him to arise and go to the Father too; but here and now the word is directly addressed to those who are already accepted in the Beloved. The Lord has given tin’s word expressly v, ith the view of administering instruction and reproof to his own children.
The verse springs at first and grows to half its height as a single stem; it then parts into two equal and parallel branches. To ‘* walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing,” thus far the Christian life is represented as one and indivisible: a walk worthy of the Lord includes within its ample girth all the graces of the Spirit. But at a certain heicfht this solid mass of stem divides and diverges, thenceforth rising toward heaven in two separate yet twin-like boughs, corresponding to the two pillars on which the whole structure of Christian theology stands — faith and obedience. From the Decalogue downwards, the teaching of the Scriptures has been poured alternately and impartially into these two moulds. To know the true, and to do the right, is the whole duty of man. God is in Christ revealed: we should draw near and know him. The world sins and suffers: we should strive to do it good. These are the twin exercises of a believer’s life, — to know more every day of God his Saviour, and to do good every day to a needy world; increase in the knowledge of God, and be fruitful in every good work.
Passing over for the present that more generalized view of the Christian life which represents all in one, as a “walk worthy of the Lord,” I request your attention to that view of it which appears in the latter portion of the text, composed of two distinct yet united branches, — “fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
We must examine first the nature of each, and thereafter we shall be better able to perceive and appreciate their reciprocal relations.
I. The nature of each.
I. Active obedience: “Fruitful in every good work.”
(i.) “Work!’ — The Christian life is essentially a life of labour. They who find Christ do, indeed, often speak of having found rest to their souls; but that rest does not imply exemption from work: on the contrary, this “peace in believing” only supplies a firm foot-hold whereon the labourer may stand more steadily, and so labour with more effect. The rest which a troubled soul finds in Christ is like the rest which the Pilgrim Fathers found on the American continent. When they stepped upon the shore free, feeling God’s earth firm under their feet, and seeing God’s sunlight bright above their heads, they said and sung, “This is our rest.” But they meant not idleness. Each family reared a cabin in the bush, and forthwith waged war against the desert, until they had subdued it, and turned it into a fruitful field. Their resting-place was their working-place; and none the worse in their esteem was the rest because of the labour that accompanied it. Beyond the reach of the tyrant, and past the dangers of the sea, the rest they sought and found was a place to work on, and useful labour close at hand.
Such is a Christian’s rest when the Son has made him free, as long as he remains in the body. Liberty to labour is all the rest he obtains or desires. Trusting in Christ’s merits, he also walks in Christ’s steps: he goeth about doing good.
(2.) “Good work.” — Not energy of action merely: the work must be good. The master is God; the motive, love; the immediate aim, the good of the world; and the standard of measurement, “the law and the testimony.”
(3.) ‘’Every good work.” — True Christian beneficence is .characterized by a grand and god-like universality. This does not mean that one man should go round the world and meddle with everything in it: it rather means that he should neglect no opportunity that comes in his way. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might;” but do not waste time and effort in trying to do all at once. The rule is not to overtake all, but to refuse none that overtake you. Have you seen those large, lovely, transparent globes that float in sheltered bays a little beneath the surface of the sea y They are living creatures. They cannot cut quickly through the water in chase of prey, but they lie wondrously open and watchful to seize the prey that comes within their reach. They lie open on all sides, and stretch out arms on all sides; and though they cannot go to a distance for what they need, they intercept and use whatever, in the miscellaneous movements of the waves, may be passing by. Thus, though nearly stationary, they are abundantly fed. Such is the activity of a Christian man. His meat is to do the Father’s will; but he is almost fixed to the spot.
and cannot roam over the world for his spirit’s congenial food. He feeds abundantly notwithstanding. Let him only lie open, and spread out, and be ready with an active arm and an eager appetite: the sort of food that will please his taste and strengthen his soul is floating past continually in the tide of time. No Christian is ever idle for want of something to do. But it is of the last importance that we should cultivate a universal willingness. Bought servants must not choose their tasks: they must labour at the task which their Master assigns to them. The tendency of every one of us is to do duty by halves. One is great in gentleness, and fails in courage; another is great in courage, and fails in gentleness. Brethren, it is not this one, or that other work for which you have a natural aptitude, but ‘^ every good work.” The acting of a virtue that is not in your nature will be a more impressive evidence that grace is reigning. When an elephant picks a pin from the dust with his huge trunk, men wonder more than when they see him break a tree. So when a man of might — some intellectual and moral hero, who dares every danger, and delights in having danger to dare — condescends to bear with the infirmities of the weakest, and like the good shepherd, tenderly lifts a weary lamb in his arms, the testimony of the fact is resistless, and observers confess that the erace of God is there. To the same extent, on the opposite side, the display of martyr courage in a good cause by one who is constitutionally sensitive and timid, tells more effectually than the exercise of the natural bent. When the plaintive and bashful Jeremiah, who said he could not speak because he was a child, stands forth for God and righteousness, setting his face like a flint before all his enemies, and denouncing unjust tyrants to their face, the rebuke is powerful in exact proportion to the natural feebleness of the reprover.
“Every good work,” Christian. You must not pick and choose. Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it; for God has put it in your way. Direct effort to convince a sinner and lead him to Christ is one good work; to set an untrained young mother on the way of cleaning her house and cooking her husband’s food is another. “Every good work.” Here it may be to open a church, and there to dig a well; here to support a missionary, and there to widen a street. Everything that would benefit the world, God’s creation, or man, God’s child, is congenial occupation for the disciple of Jesus. Universality is the characteristic most needed in our Christian benevolence. Without partiality and without hypocrisy was the Macter; without partiality and without hypocrisy should the servant be.
(4.)” Fniiiful ill every good workr — The comparison of Christian beneficence to fruit indicates its spontaneous nature, its useful effect, and its great abundance. The good works grow as fruit grows on a fruit-tree. The tree has first been made good, and then the fruit grows and ripens spontaneously. You cannot gather grapes of thorns; but neither can you find thorn fruit growing on a true vine. Every creature after its kind. He who in
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the regeneration has been made partaker of Christ, givc.i forth in his life Christ-hke actions. There is a good deal of artificial charity agoing. People can tie oranges to the sprigs of a fir-tree in a parlour, and the show will gratify children on a winter evening. But true Christian beneficence is a fruit that grows, and is not tied on. It swells up from sap which the tree of righteousness draws out of that infinite love in which it is rooted. He who is in Christ cannot stand still, any more than the water in those iron tubes which traverse our streets in connection with the great reservoir: on it must flow, wherever there is an opening, by reason of the pressure from above. Hear the exclamation of that ancient Christian in explanation of his wonderful self-sacrifice and energetic labour for the good of men: “The love of Christ constraineth me.” Efforts burst impetuous from his bosom whenever an opening was made, because he was in union with the Fountain-head on high.
As fruit is sweet and profitable, so are the efforts of Christians for the good of the world. And like the abundance with which good trees bear, is the abundance of a true disciple’s labours. The fecundity of Nature is a standing wonder with all who possess sufficient intelligence to observe it. The faculty of production in the vegetable creation is, beyond all calculation or expression, great. Through adverse seasons and other causes, the actual quantity of fruit brought to perfection is greatly limited; but the tendency and willingness and
capabihty of plants to produce their fruit in inconceivable quantities may be seen everywhere in the teeming-, flowering spring. Such is the tendency of a renewed heart. Few, few of his aspirations does a Christian ever actually reach; but they swell in his bosom numerous as the embryo seeds that hide beneath the flowers of spring. He who numbers the hairs of our head knows and feels every loving thought that trembles in a broken heart. With such sacrifices God is well pleased. He recognizes the breathings of his own Spirit in the desires; and he will remove in good time these trees of righteousness from the wilderness here to another garden, where all their flowers will become fruits, and all their fruits will ripen fully under the light of love.
2. Increase in the knowledge of God. — Christ came to make known the Father. All our true knowledge of God comes through the Mediator. The old invitation still holds good, “O taste and see that God is good!” The prodigal would sometimes, in his exile, think of his father, and fear his anger; but he never knew his father until he returned and lay in his bosom. In obtainingpardon and reconciliation through the blood of the Lamb, you have the beginning of this knowledge; and those who attain the beginning are never content to rest there. They forget and leave behind the attainments already made, and reach forward to other and higher measures of experience.
I am persuaded that any Christian, be he learned or unlearned, who has been walking by faith for ten or twenty years, will be able, on a careful comparison, to detect a marked difference between the knowledge of God which he attained at first, and that which he possesses now. As long as the tree lives, it grows. The disciple who has walked far over the pilgrim’s journey, has a broader, deeper, more comprehensive knowledge both of himself and of God than on the day when he first took up his cross to follow Christ.
Among other features of the divine nature and attributes which the experienced disciple knows better now, the Fatherliness of God may be noted as perhaps the side on which the greatest advances are obtained. More or less of the spirit of bondage remains in a young disciple even after true conversion. It is long ere perfect love casts out fear; perhaps the fear is never wholly cast out on this side of the grave; but much progress may be made in gradually diminishing it, by the inlet of confiding love. It is like the process of exhausting the air from a glass cup, and so making it adhere more and more firmly to the table on which it stands. You place it with its open mouth in contact with a substantially solid but superficially soft surface, and begin to exhaust the air from its cavity. At the very commencement of the operation, when only a very little of the air has been extracted, the cup begins to clasp spontaneously the surface on which it leans. You proceed; firmer and more firm becomes the cup’s hold, as the process of exhaustion goes forward. You do not, indeed, succeed in drawing out all the air, — some remains in spite of every effort; but, for practical purposes, it is all the same in effect as if the vacuum were complete. In some such way increases the knowledge of God in a pardoned sinner’s breast. More and more of guilt’s fear is drawn off from his bosom; more and more firmly, therefore, does that bosom cleave to the almighty strength it leans upon. The fear is never wholly removed in the body here; and yet, as to cleaving, the result may be the same practically. So much of the fear may be taken out, and so great, consequently, may be love’s spontaneous clasping to a Saviour’s arm, that all the principalities and powers of earth, all things present and all things to come, could not separate that trusting man from that trusted Redeemer.
11. The tmioii and reciprocal 7’elations of these two: Friiitf Illness 17i Christian activity and Increase in the knowledge of God.
The two grow together not only as two parallel boughs of one bifurcated tree, standing on one stem, drawing sap from the same root, and pointing up to the same heaven. The union is all this, and more. On the tree, one of the boughs might live although the other were wrenched off by a storm. But the union of the two things in the text is like the union of the two sides in a human body: if one were wanting, the other would die. Christ-like work for the world will lead the labourer’s understanding deeper and deeper into the secret of the Lord; and, reciprocally, increase in the knowledge of God stimulates into greater activity substantial kindness to men. As the swing of the pendulum to the right becomes the power which carries it to the left, and its swing to the left the power which carries it back to the right; so true good-doing makes the doer know God more, and true knowledge of God sends back the scholar with a new impulse to his work in the world. Moreover, by the balancing alternations of the pendulum aberrations are prevented, and the steady, true-going of the clock is secured; so the Christian life goes best which goes between a deep, contemplative, spiritual knowledge of God, and hearty practical work, as far as opportunity offers, for every interest of every brother man. These two God hath joined; let no man dare to put them asunder.
I. Contemplate now the two sides alternately, one at a time: and, first, active obedience is necessary to a solid increase of spiritual experience; you must be fruitful in every good work, if you would increase in the knowledge of God.
Alas! the history of Christianity teems with evidence that spiritual contemplation soon runs to seed when practical duty is neglected. It was thus that monkery began. It sprang at an early period of the Christian era, and in Egypt — an ill-omened land. Men desired to increase in the knowledge of God, and therefore retired from the world. They hid themselves in caves on the edges of the desert: good works they rendered for themselves impossible, by a voluntary banishment from their kind. They made themselves utterly barren in that very thing wherein God had commanded them to be fruitful, and that on pretence of obtaining thereby more experimental knowledge of God. What God had joined those men presumed to put asunder; and they fared accordingly, as all potsherds of the earth shall fare who strive against their Maker. Simon, on the top of his pillar, with the world wondering after him as a saint, did not know God so well as he might if he had kept a shop all day, and played with his children in the evening. The whole monkish system is a divorce of these two, who by God’s appointment were joined in a perpetual marriage. Begun in sincere ignorance, it has been perpetuated by a cunning policy; and the result is a brood of creatures fit neither for this world nor the next. Their kite was pointing heavenward and rising; but it was not rising far enough nor fast enough. It seemed to be struggling upward, but held in check by the string that attached it to the ground. That line which bound it to the earth seemed the only hindrance of its flight to heaven. Like foolish children, they cut the line that bound it to the earth, expecting to see it then rising unimpeded to the sky; but, lo! the kite when so set free, instead of ascending majestically to heaven, whirled round two or three times wildly, giddily, and then fell flat upon the ground. Such was the result of Rome’s effort to raise her votaries to heaven, by cutting their connection with the earth. The so-called saints fell lower than before.
It is in active life that a Christian may make greatest progress in the knowledge of God. If you have been reconciled to God through Christ, the best method of improving a begun acquaintance is to take work in his service. If any man is willing to do the work, he shall know the doctrine. The more you work, the more you will be wearied; and the more you are wearied, the stronger will grow your appetite for rest: this will make you lean the oftener on the Father’s breast, and consequently increase your acquaintance with the Father. He who gives out most in exhausting labour, takes in most through wholesome food. As a general rule, the hardest worker enjoys the robustest life: spiritually, this rule certainly holds good. He who, at Christ’s command, puts forth much energy in doing good, draws more of sustaining grace from the Redeemer’s fulness to replace the outlay, and so knows better by experience how precious is God’s unspeakable gift.
2. On the other hand, contemplative communion with God is necessary to a solid, successful activity in social life. You must learn day by day more of God’s goodness in Christ to you, if you would sustain without weariness the labours of the Christian calling.
Here is one of the laws under which the disciples of Jesus live: If they rush into a constant round of working, without a corresponding increase in prayer, the work will wane away like the flame of a lamp when the oil is exhausted. When our work increases in bulk, we need more of experimental communion with God to animate the extended body. He who works most would also need to pray most. Hard task this, do you think? Yes, if it be a task, it is a hard one; but if work and prayer be both ahke a privilege, the more you have of both the happier will you be.
There is a well in your garden, and a pump for raising the water to the surface. In this way you obtain for ordinary seasons a sufficient supply. But at length a drought, more severe and more lengthened than any heretofore, compels you to make a greater demand upon the well. Every day you ply the handle harder and longer, to refresh the ground and preserve the life of the languishing vegetation. At last the supply fails, and you ply your task in vain. No water comes, because there has been too much working; the work degenerates into a barren, empty, hoarse noise. What then 1 What shall be done y Sink your well deeper, and it will stand a greater strain. We must go and do likewise when, by too great and too long-continued external activity, our movement becomes empty and fruitless labour. When we work till our souls are wrought out, we must go deeper down into the hidden veins of the soul’s supply — go deeper into the love of God, by secret communion with the Saviour; and the increase of his favour consciously compassing your soul, will sustain a new and greater effort of Christian activity.
Recall, in the close, the chief lesson of the text, as it is addressed to the disciples of Christ. The prayerless cannot work well, and the idle do not pray much. The law is — Both or neither. On the one hand, do not permit your desire for spiritual communion with God to withdraw you from any kind or measure of work which a fellow-creature needs; and on the other, do not permit your constant immersion in active duty to restrain or curtail your communion with God. Go into every good work in company with every true worker; and hallow all by keeping company with Christ at every stage of the process. Get, through the Mediator, free and frequent approach to the Father of your spirit; and commend your faith to the world, by a ready, hearty co-operation, in every effort that promises to advance either the temporal or the cpiritual interests of your fellow-men. Do do whatever your hand finds to do. Christ your master continually went about doing good: if you would be like him now, and see him as he is at last, be fruitful in every good work.
Between these two — doing good to a needy world, and getting new measures of grace out of the Redeemer’s fulness — between these two let a Christian’s life vibrate, until life on earth shall beat its last, and at its last beat leap into the life eternal.