The Grace of Thanksgiving

“I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you’’ (Phil. i. 3-8).

How natural it is for the Apostle to begin his letters in thanksgiving! He is far more sensitive to the mercies of God than to the antagonisms of men. Grace always “far more abounded” than anything else. And thus it was, because mercy was so manifest, praise was ever ready. The song was ever the fleeter of foot and arrived before complaint was awake. The man who is eager in praise to God is not swift in the censure of men. Paul was always great in eulogy, and this, I think, because he was so ready in the praise of God. He had a fine eye for the lineaments of grace, and he could discern the sproutings of holy desire, even when they were buried beneath the

refuse of sin and long-continued negligence, But the graces of the Philippians were not hidden. Their kinship with the Lord was most manifest. The Apostle’s remembrance of them stretched across his recent troubled and laborious years like a line of golden light. The line was not broken by faithless intermissions. His remembrance of them was always bright, so that whenever he gazed upon the radiant track his soul was filled with praise.

“Always in every supplication of mine on behalf of you all making my supplication with joy.” Prayer is sometimes exercised as a duty and a task; on its supreme planes it is eagerly resorted to as a joy. A part of the true conception of true intercession consists in giving pleasure to our God. To supplicate on behalf of another, and to do it with the reluctance and misgivings of a bondman, cannot be “well-pleasing unto the Lord.” It is our high privilege to enter the Presence chamber like children going home; and to name our fellow-pilgrims with the happy assurance that the very intercession is consonant with “the river of God’s pleasures.” Thus “the joy of the

Lord” will be our strength. Let us ever supplicate for others as though we had infinite resources in the goodwill of the Lord, and so let us “with joy draw water out of the wells of salvation.”

“For your fellowship in furtherance of the gospel from the first day until now.” Our spiritual comrades are among the choicest gifts of God’s love. A warrior’s courage is greatly heartened by the presence upon the field of one Valiant-for-the-truth. Our convictions are enriched by the spectacle of others who live and dare in the same faith. The faith of the faithful is inevitably altruistic; it is an esprit de corps, a holy contagion, a vitalising energy in which every member is empowered unto God. And this influential contagion of assurance belongs especially to veteran campaigners who have been “in the fellowship of the gospel from the first day.” A well-seasoned and much-tried soldier is an invaluable as set among raw recruits; the men who have been through a battle impart calmness and confidence to an otherwise untried company.

“Being confident of this very thing, that He which began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ He who fashions the seed is also Lord of the Harvest. He creates initial impulse, and He also matures the character. The quickening ministries of the spring are His; His also are the ripening ministries of the autumn. He nourishes the tender sapling into the majestic oak, and the one gracious sunshine is showered upon both. He will not leave us in our spiritual babyhood, nor will He make us precociously old. He will “perfect us,” adding grace and strength to the growing years, and “everything” shall be beautiful in its season. There shall be “fruit every month,” and the fruit shall be appropriate to our growth. The good Lord who “began a work” will not leave it imperfect and futile. Most graciously will He perfect it, until concerning every one of us He is able to say, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”

“Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because 1 have you in my heart.” We are always optimistic about the people who dwell in our hearts. When they only dwell in the suburbs of our regards we soon lose hope concerning them — we easily become the prey of enfeebling fears. But when people have “a warm place in our hearts” the light of hope is never out of our sky. That is why mothers are optimistic about their boys when everybody else is in despair. They have them in their hearts. And that is why the Good Shepherd is an optimist concerning you and me; and that is why He leaves the ninety-and-nine in the wilderness and goes out after that which is lost, “until He find it.” It is all because He has us in His heart. With what a “growing atmosphere” of hope we should enswathe one another if only we dwelt in one another’s hearts! A big hope is ever the child of passionate love.

“Inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers with me of grace.” Here was a complexity of gracious bonds; a fourfold cord which could not be broken. No wonder the Apostle has them in his heart. They were one with him in suffering, “in bonds,” and there is no welding ministry like a common passage through grief and pain. They were one with him in vigorously defending the central citadel of the Christian Faith. And they were one with him in the strengthening of these central verities by the confirming vision of their own rich and glad experience. And, above all, they were one with him in a common sustenance. They were all sitting at one table, in the enjoyment of the one “feast of fat things they were partakers with him of grace. When the day comes that such language can be used of the modern Church, she will be seen to stride through the devil’s usurped and blasted dominions with irresistible and ever-triumphant strength.

“For God is my witness, how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.’’ Paul is never afraid of calling upon the witness of the Almighty. Again and again he makes quiet and confident appeal for Divine confirmation of his own word. He lives in the secret place with the Lord, and the light of the Divine countenance fills all his affairs, just as the sunshine floods an open field. His sense of the sacred presence is unbroken; whenever or wherever he looks, he contemplates the face of the Almighty. And therefore everything is born in the light; nothing in his life is a fruit of the darkness. Everything is a child of light, and he dares to call upon the Lord to witness and confirm the glorious nobility of its birth. How many of us fear the witnessings of the Lord! We would hide ourselves from Him, and remove all our affairs from His searching beam. Blessed and thrice blessed is the life which is gloriously illumined in its “hidden parts” and which can humbly call upon the Lord to bear witness to the seals of His own grace.

And to what does he call the Lord to witness? “How I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.” He claims to be in the heart of the Lord Jesus, and from that heart of all compassion, he yearns after the disciples of Philippi. His longings are in accord with the longings of his Saviour — the pulse of his desire beats with the pulse of the desires of his Lord. It is a wonderful claim, and he calls God to witness its reality and power. He dwells in the heart of Christ, and he shares His travail for the souls of men. He has a part in the strain and pang of redeeming labour; he is a “partaker of His sufferings he fills up “that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ.” No one can abide in Christ and not feel the burdensome drain of sacrificial desire.