Then, "_we are confident_." If I traced the bearing of this clause aright, in the last chapter, we shall feel that the word _pepoithotes_ is meant to carry a _positive_ message. It is not only that "we do not rely on the flesh"; it is that "we are reliant, though not on the flesh." Even so, in the true idea of the Christian life. "_We are confident_." We are not wanderers from one peradventure to another; we are reliant, we are assured, we know where we are, and what we are, and whither we are bound. True, we, are intensely conscious of the limits of our knowledge; it is only here and there that we can absolutely say, "We know." But then, the points where we _can_ say so are points of supreme importance. "We know that the Son of God is come." "We know that our sins are forgiven us for His name's sake." "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; therefore we are always _confident_." And all this is summed up in the thought that "we know WHOM we have believed, and that HE is able to keep what we have committed unto Him." Our certainty is a confiding certainty. It does not reside in our courage, or our mental insight; it is lodged in a Person, who is such that He claims our entire reliance on His work, His word, Himself.
Then from its other side this wonderful verse gives us the cautions, the negatives, of the Christian life; though even here it speaks the language of the highest positive truth. "We worship _by God's Spirit_"; our reverence, our adoration, the hallowing and religiousness of our lives, is not a form imposed from without; it is a power exerting itself from within, having come to our poor hearts from above. Assuredly we do not neglect or slight actions and rites of worship; He who has made each of us soul and body, one man, does not mean us to despise the outward and physical in devotion. But we watchfully remember that no such actions or rites are, for one moment, the soul of worship, or its formative power. _That_ soul and power is "God's Spirit" only; the Holy Ghost dwelling in the renewed being, and teaching the man "to cry Abba, Father," and "making intercession for him with groanings which cannot be uttered," and "taking of the things of Christ, and shewing it unto us." We pray, and it is "in the Holy Ghost." We worship, and it is "in Spirit, and in truth."
Again, "we exult _in Christ Jesus_." Our glad and animated happiness lies in nothing short of HIM as its cause. We are thankful for noble religious traditions and institutions, and for holy parentage, and for all which makes Christianity correspond in practice to its name. But we are watchful not to let even these blessings take the unique place of "Christ Jesus" in our "exultation." "In all things He must have the pre-eminence." Piety itself without Him, if it can be found, is not a body but a statue. All the privileges of the Church of God, without Him, though we reverently cherish every teaching and every ordinance that is Christian indeed, are but the frame without the picture, the casket without the stone.
Then again, "_not in the flesh_ are we confident." We have learnt a deep distrust of everything which St Paul classes under that word "flesh." It is always offering itself to us, in one Protean shape or another, to be our comfort and our repose. Sometimes it takes the form of our supposed usefulness and diligence; sometimes of our strict and exemplary observances; sometimes, putting on a disguise still more subtle, it sets before the Christian the depth, or the length, of his spiritual experience. Or it grows bolder, and is content with coarser masks; it tempts us to a miserable reliance on some imagined betterness when we compare ourselves, forsooth, with some one else. I knew long ago an old shepherd, in my father's parish, who based a hope for eternity on the fact (if such it was) that he was never tipsy on a Sunday. We are amused, or we are shocked. But this was only an extreme type of a vast phenomenon, to be found lurking in countless hearts, when God lets in the light; the "reliance" on our being somehow, so we think, "not as other men are." And from this whole world of delusion, in all its continents and islands, the Lord calls us away here by His Apostle. He bids us migrate as it were to another planet, laying our _whole_ confidence, not part of it, on HIM; let that other world, our old world, roll along without us.