To become like Christ is to be one who keeps the command- ments of God. For the Man Christ Jesus not only obeyed the Law in all its precepts, negative and positive; He was one in whom the full meaning of the Law, its higher and more ultimate purpose, obtained a glorious realization. The law marked out boundaries, defined the borders of action, but within these borders and subject to these limitations Christ Jesus showed in the fulness of a perfect human life the worth and value of that life the limit of which law had defined. Here there was in living, concrete form the realization of what law was meant to define, for the sake of which law was brought into existence. Now the new creature, born of God, growing by faith that works through love, just in proportion to its growth, is growing into the likeness of Christ, and so growing into the power of keeping the commandments of God, as Jesus kept them.
^ Do not let us understand by what is called a " command- ment " a peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech, and giving orders to the Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what He
1 life of Octavia Hill, 184.
GAL. V. 6 393
ought to do. Let us rather, in a sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission of will, like the reflexion of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father to Son.^
^ The question, in the last analysis, is between self and Christ, between works and grace. That is the evangelical crux of faith. It is quite true that " character is salvation," and that goodness is goodness all the world over. Yet the fact remains that the more character and goodness we have, the less we are satisfied with it, and the more surely we are driven back on the redeeming love of God in Jesus Christ. Every advance in character only reveals more surely the infinite stretch of moral height and depth. And the more hopelessly we realize this, the more urgently do we feel our need of One to cast ourselves out on, good and evil alike, that we may lose all, and so find all in Him. After all, character is salvation : and there is a very real danger in any presentation of Christianity that would seem even to the most ignorant kind of man to disparage character. There is a popular hymn which contains the lines :
Doing is a deadly thing, Doing ends in death.
And Joannes Agricola's Calvinism leads him to the confident assurance that —
I have God's warrant, could I blend All hideous sins, as in a cup. To drink the mingled venoms up;
Secure my nature will convert
The draught to blossoming gladness fast.
It is easy to see how dangerous such ideas may be to ill-balanced natures and untrained consciences.^
1 St. BasU. » John Kelman, The Road, ii. 157.
The Fruit of the Spirit.
m
Literature.
Allon (H.), The Indwelling Christ, 199.
Armitage (W. J.), The Fruit of the Spirit, 11.
Bigg (C), The Spirit of Christ in Common Life, 169.
Gibbon (J. M.), Times and Seasons, 96.
Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 212.
Hunswortb (Q.), Light in the Gloom, 108.
Ingram (A, F. W.), A Mission of the Spirit, 31.
Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 181.
Jones (W. B.), Tlie Peace of God, 336.
Kingsley (C), National Sermons, 85.
Learmont (J.), In God's Orchard, 13.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 2 Corinthians, Galatians, etc., 162.
Martineau (J.), Hours of Thought, i. 297.
Morgan (G. H.), Modern Knights-Errant, 45.
Murray (A.), The Spirit of Christ, 283.
„ (W. H.), The Fruits of the Spirit, 1. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, xi. 393. Russell (A.), The Light that Lighteth every Man, 256. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxvii. (1881), No. 1582 ;
XXX. (1884), No. 1782. Spurgin (E. B.), The Work and Fruits of the Holy Spirit, 83. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xxiv. (1884), No. 1277. Wallace (D.), The Secret of Serenity, 49. Wilberforce (B.), Following on to Know the Lord, 47. Wiseman (F. L.), in God's Garden, 273.
British Congregationalist, Dec. 29, 1910 (G. Campbell Morgan). Christian World Pulpit, xi. 315 (H. W. Beecher) ; xxx. 43 (J. Culross) ;
XXXV. 116 (R. W. Dale) ; lii. 105 (L. Abbott) ; Ixi. 209 (T. K. Cheyne). Chitrch of England Pulpit, Ixiii. 169 (F. R. M. Hitchcock). Churchman's Pulpit: Whitsunday, ix. 110 (A. M. Mackay) ; Fourteenth
Sunday after Trinity, xii. 51 (T. K. Cheyne) ; Sermons to the
Young, xvi. 278 (E. Garbett). Examiner, Sept. 16, 1904 (J. H. Jowett).
The Fruit of the Spirit.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance : against such there is no law. —Gal. V. 22, 23.
This text needs no introduction. But by way of exposition we may divide it into three parts, and consider (1) the Nature of the Fruit of which the Apostle speaks; (2) its Variety — this being the chief thing here ; and (3) its Culture.
The Natuke of The Fruit.
1. The fruit is the creation of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is not something that springs out of our old nature, amended, educated, refined; not something that we create in ourselves by our own will or effort, but something that is wrought in us by Divine power and energy. As well might a gardener try to cover a dead stick with green leaves and luscious fruit. The thing is impossible. Every bit of the "fruit" which God loves is the work, from first to last, of the Holy Ghost. His is all the glory. And only in the simplest dependence upon Him, and in surrender of ourselves to His almighty influence, can we ever know this blessed "fruit" as ours, to the glory of God.