Philippians 2:21

Philippians 2:21

The Life of Christ the Only True Idea of Self-devotion.

There is something peculiarly touching in the saddened tone of these few words, in which St. Paul glances at the slackness of his fellow-labourers. It must have been a cross almost too heavy to bear without complaining when from his prison-house at Rome he saw his brethren in Christ drawing off one by one from the hardness of their Master's service; it must have been a provocation almost beyond endurance to see day by day tokens of a faint heart and a selfish purpose coming out in the words and acts of those on whom he most depended. It added to his bondage the worst form of desolation: the loneliness of a high unbroken spirit in the throng of shrinking and inconstant men. The heart-sin of which St. Paul writes is a refined selfishness, so plausibly defended, so strongly entrenched in reasonable pleadings, as to leave him no more to do, than to expostulate and to be silent, to give them a fair opening to do high service for their Master and then to pass them by and choose some worthier and bolder men. The peculiar danger of this fault may be seen by the following remarks:

I. It may consist with all that the Church requires of her people as a condition of communion in her fullest privileges. A man may be under the dominion of this paralysing fault, and yet really live in many ways a Christian life. A very large part of Christianity is directly favourable to a man's worldly interests: all that goes to the establishing of a fair reputation and to the conciliation of goodwill is full of solid advantage; self-regard and self-respect urgently prescribe to a man such a habit of life as shall be in accordance with the outward example of Christ's true servants.

II. This habit of mind, while it satisfies the external demands of the Church and ministers to the inward happiness of the mind, absolutely extinguishes all that ever produced any great work in Christ's service; it stunts the whole spirit at the standard of self, and makes all a man's thoughts and powers minister and submit themselves to his own aim and purpose, None are so hard to rouse to great works of faith as such men. If we should plead with a Magdalene out of whom have been cast seven devils, or a Peter who hath thrice denied his Lord, or a Paul who hath made havoc of the Church, there is material for a substantive and vivid character; there is energy for a life above the world. Conformed to the likeness of their Lord, the examples of all living men are no more to them than the gaudy, shifting clouds of an evening sky; moving along the path of the Cross, all the soft and silken curtains of life are as threads of idle gossamer. There is about them a moral weight, and an onward force, and a clear definite outline of character, before which everything gives way. They hurry all before them as by the spell of absolute dominion. Oh that we did but know the freedom and the happiness of a life above the world! They whose names are splendid with the most hallowed light have in their day moved along all paths of life. None so wise, so courteous, so beloved, as they; none richer nor more prosperous; none more faithful in their stewardship of this world's wealth; none bequeathed costlier heirlooms to their children's children, and that because they sought not their own, but the things that were Jesus Christ's.

H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. i., p. 146.

References: Philippians 2:21. J. F. Tinling, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 191; Parker, Pulpit Analyst,vol. ii., p. 498.