The Rule of Faith

“Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded” (Phil. iii. 15, 16).

But this is not the perfection of holy attainment. It is the maturity of grown men who have “put away childish things.” It marks the passage from the letter to the spirit, from the husk to the kernel, from the cold rule to the living principle, from the rudiments of mere ordinances to the expanding liberty of faith. And so it is not the attainment of perfection, but the attainment of the spiritual mood or posture which will inevitably ensure perfection. The Apostle has found the way of perfectness, and in that way sanctification is sure. A little while ago I lost myself in the mazing windings of a great city. I asked for guidance, and was conducted by a willing friend to the required

road. When my feet were on the highway my friend left me, saying, “Now you’re right.” Not that I had arrived, but that I was sure of arrival. And thus it was with Paul. He had found “the Way,” the perfect Way, and some day he should most certainly become like his Lord, for he should see Him as He is.

Now, many of us are still in the rudimentary stages of the religious life. We are living, like the Pharisees, in the outsides of things, in the dim back streets, and we have not yet found “the way of holiness” along which walk the “ransomed of the Lord with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.” We play with ritual, and we do not worship in the Spirit. We give tithes, but we do not give ourselves. We fast twice a week, but we are not shedding our blood in secret sacrifice. We recount our merits, we do not sing the Saviour’s grace. We make a show of our works, and we do not “walk by faith.” And so we are satisfied, persuading ourselves that we have reached the moral summit, when all the time the white heights are hiding there in a self-created mist.

But we must seek the great road of the Spirit, and in that road of far vistas “walk humbly” with our God.

“Let us, therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.” When we have found the Way, let us have the mind of the Apostle, and forget our past attainments in reaching out for further triumphs. Every day has its own appointed surprise. Every new set of circumstances is the custodian of heavenly wealth. Every new step in the way brings us to a new portion of the field where hidden treasure awaits us. Let us, therefore, be “thus minded,” with every part of our being thrilling in a great expectancy, assured that every moment is just a providential minister, ordained to still further enrich us with “the grace and truth which were in Christ Jesus.”

“And if in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you.” If a man lift his eyes unto the hills of the heavenly calling, and serving God in the Spirit, shall walk by faith, he shall not be suffered to lose his way, even though he may make an occasional slip in judgment. A man who is fundamentally right, and whose eager purpose it is to “press toward the mark,” shall not be allowed to wander into the perilous morass, or out on to the trackless moor. If he makes a mistake God will graciously put it right: “even this shall God reveal unto you.” I think this is an exquisitely gracious promise. When a man is “right with God,” his very errors of tactics shall be governed by the Lord for His own most Holy ends. Our God does not treat us as infants who must just be commanded and controlled. He treats us as men and women possessed of certain endowments which, if disciplined, will make us strong and full of discernment. It is His gracious will to bring us into holiness and power, into glorious forcefulness of character; but this could never be accomplished if He carried us as though we were logs, devoid of all self-initiative and power of moral judgment. We are not to be marionettes but men. And so we have to “run” and “wrestle” and “follow after” and “press toward the mark.” And if in this holy and strenuous crusade we stumble in judgment, God will not permit us to stray into disaster and contempt. He will tenderly bend our erring feet into the Way again, for “even this shall God reveal unto you.”

“Only zvhereunto we have already attained, by that same rule let us walk.” Yes, we must remember this. It is by the rule of faith that our conquests become assured. Faith makes new conquests, and preserves the spoils of the old. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” We must not deliberately leave the highway and turn into the byways again. “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye made perfect in the flesh?” We must not pause in our progress to recover an effete implement, to re-adopt a condemned method, and hope to reach still higher standards by expediencies which are obsolete. The rule of faith must be all-predominant throughout the entire way. It is as necessary to Paul the aged saint, as to Timothy, who has just been converted to the service. The same great fundamental conditions nourish the matured oak and the fragile sapling; and faith is as necessary to the sturdy veteran who is climbing the higher peaks of the hills of God as to the youthful disciple who is just addressing himself to the lower slopes.