PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and Philemon
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 143,068 words · 197 reading sections
_The New Nature Wrought Out In New Life._
Christianity waged no direct war against these social evils of antiquity, but it killed them much more effectually by breathing into the conscience of the world truths which made their continuance impossible. It girdled the tree, and left it to die--a much better and more thorough plan than dragging it out of the groun…
425 wordsSECTION 122_The Garments Of The Renewed Soul._
"Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: and above all these things put on love, which is the bond o…
920 wordsSECTION 123_The Garments Of The Renewed Soul._
Above all things, the practical discipline which cultivates pity will beware of letting it be excited and then not allowing the emotion to act. To stimulate feeling and do nothing in consequence is a short road to destroy the feeling. Pity is meant to be the impulse toward help, and if it is checked and suffered to pas…
776 wordsSECTION 124_The Garments Of The Renewed Soul._
Then follow "meekness, long-suffering." The distinction between these two is slight. According to the most thorough investigators, the former is the temper which accepts God's dealings, or evil inflicted by men as His instruments, without resistance, while the latter is the long holding out of the mind before it gives …
755 wordsSECTION 125_The Garments Of The Renewed Soul._
_The great pattern and motive of forgiveness_ is next set forth. We are to forgive as Christ has forgiven us; and that "as" may be applied either as meaning "in like manner," or as meaning "because." The Revised Version, with many others, adopts the various reading of "the Lord," instead of "Christ," which has the adva…
724 wordsSECTION 126_The Garments Of The Renewed Soul._
We can conceive of all the dispositions already named as existing in some fashion without love. There might be pity which was not love, though we know it is akin to it. The feeling with which one looks upon some poor outcast, or on some stranger in sorrow, or even on an enemy in misery, may be very genuine compassion, …
709 wordsSECTION 127_The Garments Of The Renewed Soul._
But both the armour and the dress of peace presuppose that we have listened to Christ's pleading counsel to buy of Him "white raiment that we may be clothed, and that the shame of our nakedness do not appear." The garment for the soul, which is to hide its deformities and to replace our own filthy rags, is woven in no …
279 wordsSECTION 128Xxi.
_THE PRACTICAL EFFECTS OF THE PEACE OF CHRIST, THE WORD OF CHRIST, AND THE NAME OF CHRIST._ "And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye were called in one body; and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another with psalms _…
667 wordsSECTION 129Xxi.
We are summoned to improve that gift--to "_let_ the peace of Christ" have its way in our hearts. The surest way to increase our possession of it is to decrease our separation from Him. The fulness of our possession of His gift of peace depends altogether on our proximity to the Giver. It evaporates in carrying. It "dim…
678 wordsSECTION 130Xxi.
The very abruptness of the introduction of the next precept gives it force, "and be ye thankful," or, as we might translate with an accuracy which perhaps is not too minute, "become thankful," striving towards deeper gratitude than you have yet attained. Paul is ever apt to catch fire as often as his thought brings him…
870 wordsSECTION 131Xxi.
That word is to dwell in Christian men _richly_. It is their own fault if they possess it, as so many do, in scant measure. It might be a full tide. Why in so many is it a mere trickle, like an Australian river in the heat, a line of shallow ponds with no life or motion, scarcely connected by a thread of moisture, and …
941 wordsSECTION 132Xxi.
The teaching and admonishing is here regarded as being effected by means of song. That strikes one as singular, and tempts to another punctuation of the verse, by which "In all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another" should make a separate clause, and "in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" should be attached to…
761 wordsSECTION 133Xxi.
Do all "in the name of the Lord Jesus." That means at least two things--in obedience to His authority, and in dependence on His help. These two are the twin talismans which change the whole character of our actions, and preserve us, in doing them, from every harm. That name hallows and ennobles all work. Nothing can be…
572 wordsSECTION 134_The Christian Family._
[3] Lightfoot. "Wives, be in subjection to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. "Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing in the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged. "Servants, obey in al…
712 wordsSECTION 135_The Christian Family._
Such then as are the nature and the spring of the Church's "subjection" to Christ, such will be the nature and the spring of the wife's "subjection" to the husband. That is to say, it is a subjection of which love is the very soul and animating principle. In a true marriage, as in the loving obedience of a believing so…
853 wordsSECTION 136_The Christian Family._
II. The Reciprocal Duties of children and parents--obedience and gentle loving authority. The injunction to children is laconic, decisive, universal. "Obey your parents in all things." Of course, there is one limitation to that. If God's command looks one way, and a parent's the opposite, disobedience is duty--but suc…
946 wordsSECTION 137_The Christian Family._
So parents are to let the sunshine of their smile ripen their children's love to fruit of obedience, and remember that frost in spring scatters the blossoms on the grass. Many a parent, especially many a father, drives his child into evil by keeping him at a distance. He should make his boy a companion and playmate, te…
797 wordsSECTION 138_The Christian Family._
But the principles laid down here are quite as applicable to our form of domestic and other service as to the slaves and masters of Colossae. Note then the extent of the servant's obedience--"in all things." Here, of course, as in former cases, is there presupposed the limit of supreme obedience to God's commands; tha…
898 wordsSECTION 139_The Christian Family._
The last word to the slave is a warning against neglect of duty. There is to be a double recompense--to the slave of Christ the portion of a son; to the wrong doer retribution "for the wrong that he has done." Then, though slavery was itself a wrong, though the master who held a man in bondage was himself inflicting th…
726 wordsSECTION 140_The Christian Family._
The Apostle does not define what _is_ "right and equal." That will come. The main thing is to drive home the conviction that there are duties owing to slaves, inferiors, employes. We are far enough from a satisfactory discharge of these yet; but, at any rate, everybody now admits the principle--and we have mainly to th…
505 wordsSECTION 141_Precepts For The Innermost And Outermost Life._
"Continue stedfastly in prayer, watching therein with thanksgiving; withal praying for us also, that God may open unto us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds; that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the ti…
881 wordsSECTION 142_Precepts For The Innermost And Outermost Life._
In like manner, there may be a continual, unspoken and unbroken presence of the second element of prayer, which is aspiration, or desire after God. All circumstances, whether duty, sorrow or joy, should and may be used to stamp more deeply on my consciousness the sense of my weakness and need; and every moment, with it…
721 wordsSECTION 143_Precepts For The Innermost And Outermost Life._
One more word has still to be said. This continual prayer is to be "with thanksgiving"--again the injunction so frequent in this letter, in such various connections. Every prayer should be blended with gratitude, without the perfume of which, the incense of devotion lacks one element of fragrance. The sense of need, or…
658 wordsSECTION 144_Precepts For The Innermost And Outermost Life._
II. We have here next, a couple of precepts, which spring at a bound from the inmost secret of the Christian life to its circumference, and refer to the outward life in regard to the non-Christian world, enjoining, in view of it, a wise walk and gracious speech. "Walk in wisdom towards them that are without." Those th…
786 wordsSECTION 145_Precepts For The Innermost And Outermost Life._
We owe them that are without such a walk as may tend to bring them in. Our life is to a large extent their Bible. They know a great deal more about Christianity, as they see it in us, than as it is revealed in Christ, or recorded in Scripture--and if, as seen in us, it does not strike them as very attractive, small won…
704 wordsSECTION 146_Precepts For The Innermost And Outermost Life._
The speech is to be "seasoned with salt." That does not mean the "Attic salt" of wit. There is nothing more wearisome than the talk of men who are always trying to be piquant and brilliant. Such speech is like a "pillar of salt"--it sparkles, but is cold, and has points that wound, and it tastes bitter. That is not wha…
711 wordsSECTION 147_Tychicus And Onesimus, The Letter-Bearers._
When we think of our selfish disregard of the woes and dangers of the poor wanderers without, exposed to the storm, while we think ourselves safe in the fold, and of how little we have meditated on and still less discharged our obligations to them, and of how we have let precious opportunities slip through our slack ha…
834 wordsSECTION 148_Tychicus And Onesimus, The Letter-Bearers._
We do not know that all the seven accompanied Paul to Jerusalem. Trophimus we know did, and another of them, Aristarchus, is mentioned as having sailed with him on the return voyage from Palestine (Acts xxvii. 2). But if they were not intended to go to Jerusalem, why did they meet him at all? The sacredness of the numb…
666 wordsSECTION 149_Tychicus And Onesimus, The Letter-Bearers._
The most careful students now think that the Epistle to the Ephesians was meant to go the round of the Churches of Asia Minor, beginning, no doubt, with that in the great city of Ephesus. If that be so, and Tychicus had to carry it to these Churches in turn, he would necessarily come, in the course of his duty, to Laod…
756 wordsSECTION 150_Tychicus And Onesimus, The Letter-Bearers._
So then, he is fairly taken as representing the greatness and sacredness of small and secular service for Christ. For the Apostle goes on to add something to his eulogium as a "faithful minister"--when he calls him "a fellow-servant," or slave, "in the Lord." As if he had said, Do not suppose that because I write this …
704 wordsSECTION 151_Tychicus And Onesimus, The Letter-Bearers._
Another thought may be suggested--fleeting things done for Christ are eternal. How astonished Tychicus would have been if anybody had told him on that day when he got away from Rome, with the two precious letters in his scrip, that these bits of parchment would outlast all the ostentatious pomp of the city, and that hi…
929 wordsSECTION 152_Tychicus And Onesimus, The Letter-Bearers._
Does not then that figure stand forth a living illustration of the _transforming_ power of Christianity? Slaves had well-known vices, largely the result of their position--idleness, heartlessness, lying, dishonesty. And this man had had his full share of the sins of his class. Think of him as he left Colossae, slinking…
745 wordsSECTION 153_Salutations From The Prisoner'S Friends._
"Aristarchus my fellow-prisoner saluteth you, and Mark, the cousin of Barnabas (touching whom ye received commandments; if he come unto you, receive him), and Jesus, which is called Justus, who are of the circumcision: these only _are my_ fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God, men that have been a comfort unto me.…
721 wordsSECTION 154_Salutations From The Prisoner'S Friends._
Mark comes next. His story is well known--how twelve years before, he had joined the first missionary band from Antioch, of which his cousin Barnabas was the leader, and had done well enough as long as they were on known ground, in Barnabas' (and perhaps his own) native island of Cyprus, but had lost heart and run home…
752 wordsSECTION 155_Salutations From The Prisoner'S Friends._
Now these three men, the only three Jewish Christians in Rome who had the least sympathy with Paul and his work, give us, in their isolation, a vivid illustration of the antagonism which he had to face from that portion of the early Church. The great question for the first generation of Christians was, not whether Gent…
750 wordsSECTION 156_Salutations From The Prisoner'S Friends._
That being distinctly understood, we need not hesitate to recognise the transitory nature of much of the embodiment of the eternal truth concerning the eternal Christ. To draw the line accurately between the permanent and the transient would be to anticipate history and read the future. But the clear recognition of the…
761 wordsSECTION 157_Salutations From The Prisoner'S Friends._
We notice too the kind of prayer which love naturally presents. It is constant and earnest--"always striving," or as the word might be rendered, "agonizing." That word suggests first the familiar metaphor of the wrestling-ground. True prayer is the intensest energy of the spirit pleading for blessing with a great striv…
796 wordsSECTION 158_Salutations From The Prisoner'S Friends._
As for Demas, we know no more about him except the melancholy record, "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world; and is departed unto Thessalonica." Perhaps he was a Thessalonian, and so went home. His love of the world, then, was his reason for abandoning Paul. Probably it was on the side of danger that…
778 wordsSECTION 159_Closing Messages._
"Salute the brethren that are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the Church that is in their house. And when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea. And say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast …
707 wordsSECTION 160_Closing Messages._
We may note, too, the beautiful glimpse we get here of domestic and social religion. If the Church in the house of Nymphas consisted of his own family and dependants, it stands for us as a lesson of what every family, which has a Christian man or woman at its head, ought to be. Little knowledge of the ordering of so-c…
776 wordsSECTION 161_Closing Messages._
The urgency of these instructions that Paul's letters should be read, reminds us of a similar but still more stringent injunction in his earliest epistle (1 Thess. v. 27), "I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren." Is it possible that these Churches did not much care for Paul's wor…
671 wordsSECTION 162_Closing Messages._
There must be diligent watchfulness, in order to fulfil our ministry. We must take heed to our service, and we must take heed to ourselves. We have to reflect upon it, its extent, nature, imperativeness, upon the manner of discharging it, and the means of fitness for it. We have to keep our work ever before us. Unless …
751 wordsSECTION 163_Closing Messages._
One cannot but recall the words of Paul's Master, so like these in sound, so unlike them in deepest meaning. Can there be a greater contrast than between "Remember my bonds," the plaintive appeal of a weak man seeking sympathy, coming as an appendix, quite apart from the subject of the letter, and "Do this in remembran…
638 wordsSECTION 164I.
"Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our beloved and fellow-worker, and to Apphia our sister, and to Archippus our fellow-soldier, and to the Church in thy house: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."--PHILEM. 1-3 (Rev. Ver.). This Epistle stands …
685 wordsSECTION 165I.
The structure of the letter is of the utmost simplicity. It is not so much a structure as a flow. There is the usual superscription and salutation, followed, according to Paul's custom, by the expression of his thankful recognition of the love and faith of Philemon and his prayer for the perfecting of these. Then he go…
847 wordsSECTION 166I.
He is called "our fellow-labourer." The designation may imply some actual co-operation at a former time. But more probably, the phrase, like the similar one in the next verse, "our fellow-soldier," is but Paul's gracefully affectionate way of lifting these good people's humbler work out of its narrowness, by associatin…
725 wordsSECTION 167I.
A third name is united with those of husband and wife, that of Archippus. The close relation in which the names stand, and the purely domestic character of the letter, make it probable that he was a son of the wedded pair. At all events, he was in some way part of their household, possibly some kind of teacher and guid…
778 wordsSECTION 168I.
But the deeper lesson here is to be found by observing that "grace" refers to the action of the Divine heart, and "peace" to the result thereof in man's experience. As we have noted in commenting on Col. i. 2, "grace" is free, undeserved, unmotived, self-springing love. Hence it comes to mean, not only the deep fountai…
677 wordsSECTION 169I.
Thus, in all the manifold forms in which restless hearts need peace, the grace of God brings it to them. The great river of mercy which has its source deep in the heart of God, and in His free, undeserved love, pours into poor, unquiet spirits, and there spreads itself into a placid lake, on whose still surface all hea…
399 wordsSECTION 170Ii.
"I thank my God always, making mention of thee in my prayers, hearing of thy love, and of the faith which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all the saints; that the fellowship of thy faith may become effectual, in the knowledge of every good thing which is in you, unto Christ. For I had much joy and comfo…
867 wordsSECTION 171Ii.
Another peculiarity in the arrangement of the words is that the objects of love and faith are named in the reverse order to that in which these graces are mentioned, "the Lord Jesus" being first, and "all the saints" last. Thus we have, as it were, "faith towards the Lord Jesus" imbedded in the centre of the verse, whi…
749 wordsSECTION 172Ii.
Where the centre is such a faith, its circumference and outward expression will be a widely diffused love. That deep and most private emotion of the soul, which is the flight of the lonely spirit to the single Christ, as if these two were alone in the world, does not bar a man off from his kind, but effloresces into th…
729 wordsSECTION 173Ii.
"The fellowship of thy faith" is capable of more than one meaning. The signification of the principal word and the relation expressed by the preposition may be variously determined. "Fellowship" is more than once used in the sense of sharing material wealth with Christ's poor, or more harshly and plainly, charitable co…
759 wordsSECTION 174Ii.
There is also brought out in this prayer the value of Christian beneficence as a means of spiritual growth. Philemon's "communication of faith" will help him to the knowledge of the fulness of Christ. The reaction of conduct on character and growth in godliness is a familiar idea with Paul, especially in the prison epi…
813 wordsSECTION 175Ii.
These final words suggest the unexpected good which good deeds may do. No man can ever tell how far the blessing of his trivial acts of kindness, or other pieces of Christian conduct, may travel. They may benefit one in material fashion, but the fragrance may reach many others. Philemon little dreamed that his small ch…
496 wordsSECTION 176Iii.
"Wherefore, though I have all boldness in Christ to enjoin thee that which is befitting, yet for love's sake I rather beseech, being such a one as Paul the aged, and now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ; I beseech thee for my child, whom I have begotten in my bonds, Onesimus; who was aforetime unprofitable to thee, …
856 wordsSECTION 177Iii.
There is a large lesson here for all human relationships. Fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, friends and companions, teachers and guides of all sorts, should set their conduct by this pattern, and let the law of love sit ever upon their lips. Authority is the weapon of a weak man, who is doubtful of his own power…
812 wordsSECTION 178Iii.
Paul the aged was full of interest in the things of the day; no mere "praiser of time gone by," but a strenuous worker, cherishing a quick sympathy and an eager interest which kept him young to the end. Witness that last chapter of the second Epistle to Timothy, where he is seen, in the immediate expectation of death, …
841 wordsSECTION 179Iii.
But there is something of more importance than Paul's inborn delicacy and tact to notice here. Onesimus had been a bad specimen of a bad class. Slavery must needs corrupt both the owner and the chattel; and, as a matter of fact, we have classical allusions enough to show that the slaves of Paul's period were deeply tai…
683 wordsSECTION 180Iv.
Paul pleads with Philemon to take back his worthless servant, and assures him that he will find Onesimus helpful now. Christ does not need to be besought to welcome His runaway good-for-nothings, however unprofitable they have been. That Divine charity of His forgives all things, and "hopes all things" of the worst, an…
651 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.