The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 71

cation. Not that truth is miraculou8ly conveyed; the Spirit takes the revealed facts and applies them to the mind, quickening and illumining the powers so tiiat they receive and rejoice in the truth of God. IV. PONDED nm CONDITION OF RECEIVING THJe KNOWLEDGE. The revelations ar,, for those who love God. Not the great, or the wise, or the outwardly righteous are the recipients of Heaven's best blessing; but those who possess this moral and spiritual qualification. They who" wait for God," as Isaiah puts it; they who" love God," a~ it is phrased by Paul,-are the enlightened and the enriched. The spirit that is filled with gratitude and with love is thereby prepared to understand and appreciate the mysteries of Divine grace. The true love, which puts on the form of obedience, is the path to spiritual perfection. Love grows, and with it knowledge; and heaven is attractive because it is at once the abode of perfect love and the sphere of perfect knowlcdge.-T. Ver. 16.-" The mind of Ohrist." Some professed Christians have the name, and only the name, of Christ. Some are satisfied to have in sacramental bread what repre- sents the body of Christ. " We," says the apostle, and all true Christians will in a lowly grateful spirit unite in the same profession-" we have the mind of Christ." I. WHAT IS MEANT BY "THE MIND OF CHRIST"? His earthly ministry, his counsels and promises to his disciples, his willing sacrifice, revealed that mind; and that so fully and so clearly that we may justly say, that mind has become and is the richest heritage and possession of humanity. 1. His was the mind that saw the truth. He did not reason it out or accept it from authority; he looked it in the face; he was naturally and perfectly and always acquainted with it. 2. His was the mind that loved the good. It was through no fierce struggle that Jesus came to admire and to appreciate moral beauty; for goodness was natural to him and perfectly congenial and delightful to his being. 3. His was the mind that chose the right. The will of man is often vacillating and varying, and in some cases it persistently chooses evil. But throughout Christ's ministry, righteousness was not the law to which he submitted, but the very life he lived. There is no instance of his preferring the wrong; he was without sin. 4. His was the mind that thought and planned and suffered for all men. It is not a just view of the mind of the Lord Christ to regard it as personal character. For he was the Son of man, and took all humanity into the embrace of his great and comprehensive mind. He thought and spake of all men as most closely related to himseif. To know his mind is to know alike the mind of man and the mind of God. II. How CAN WE PARTAKE "THE MIND OF CHRI~T"? When we consider what that mind was, we may well be all but hopeless of possessing and of sharing it. Yet it is his will that his mind should be ours, and be has made provision for our participation in, our appropriation of, his mind. 1. We acquire knowledge of that mind through the record of the gospel. His words; his miracles, his conduct, his sufferings, were all a revelation of his mind; pondering them, we come near to the thought, to the heart, of our Saviour. 2. We receive with faith the all-sufficient redemption he has effected. He is not only a Teacher, he is not only a Revelation of the Father; he is the Suviour. And it is in accepting the salvation which is through him that we are re-creuted in the likeness of his holy mind and nature. 3. We do his will, and learn that obedience is the method by which we attain to a more thorough sympathy with him. Thus ,i growing revelation on his part brings about a growing appropriation on ours. III. How CAN WE PROVE OURSELVES TO HAVE "THE MIND OF CHRIST ,, ? 1. By ou:- judgment concerning spiritual things ; for these are spiritually discerned by the dis- ciplined, the sympathetic, mind. 2. By our life of loving service; for" if a man have uut the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."-T. Vers. 1-5.-Pauline preaching. I. WHAT IT WAS NOT. 1. It was not "with excellency of speech." Paul did not come as a rhetorician ; his utterances were not orations of highly wrought eloquence. He did not seek to make the gospel palatable b_y presentinO' it with "enticinO' words." His manner was simple and unaffected; !us diction plain and easily und~rstood. He did not aim to carry everything before him with a liood of words, neither did he, 11 preacher, seek fame as an orator. He had a message to deliver, and would not obscure it by many words; he dreaded lest anythmg  72 THE FIUST EPISTLE TO THE COUINTHIANS. [cu. 11. 1-l(J.