2 Corinthians 6:1-2

OPPORTUNITY AND RESPONSIBILITY

‘We then, as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’

2 Corinthians 6:1

The two most solemn words in our language are, perhaps, the words ‘opportunity’ and ‘responsibility.’ And they mutually connote one another, for every opportunity involves a corresponding responsibility, and every real responsibility implies an opportunity.

I. It will help us to realise the solemnity which attaches to opportunity if we call to mind that the most bitter regrets of life are our regrets for lost opportunities. Think of the man of business who sees the opportunity of his lifetime after it has passed; the man of letters who looks back upon school and college days wasted; the friend who looks back upon the opportunity for explanation or forgiveness in that quarrel which parted him from the one he loved best—parted him for life. Yes! the bitterest regrets of life are those which belong to lost opportunities. But this will also be one of the chief punishments of the lost in eternity—the remorse of sorrow; the torments of self-reproach; the thought—I had my opportunity to save my soul, to win heaven, and—I lost it.

II. Seasons of opportunity.—We have our seasons of spiritual opportunity (e.g. Lent). Lent is indeed an accepted time, a day of salvation—a season of opportunity—because in Lent the Church on earth and the Church beyond is praying for the conversion of sinners; and the multitude of services, the spiritual instructions, the increased fervency of our private prayers—all these help to make Lent a season of marvellous grace. On this account it is easier to repent in Lent, to conquer our sins, to make sacrifices, to do disagreeable duties, to learn more of God and His revelation to man. In other words, Lent is undoubtedly the great opportunity of the Christian year, and the exhortation comes home to us ‘that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’

III. What is grace?—If one may use an inadequate illustration, grace is something like electricity—a mysterious power, little understood in regard to its nature, and yet easily seen in its effects. How little we really know about it! and that almost entirely empirical. We have gained what we know of electricity by making experiments, watching its effects, seeing how it works, and so learning its laws, which, however, are not laws, but merely observed phenomena.

(a) How mighty it is!—watch the lurid lightning flash and hear the thunderclap. The giant tree, the lofty tower are rent—as though they were but toys! How mighty is its power and its utility! We watch the great dynamos generating the motive force for all the machinery in some great factory, or which keeps in motion the cars upon miles of railroad. And yet—

(b) How delicate in its operations, registering through the telephone the slightest vibration of the human voice at a distance of a thousand miles; flashing in a few seconds its messages around the globe; laughing alike at time and space! And yet—this mighty force is useless unless its laws are obeyed. For centuries man lived with this force unknown and useless to him; and even now he must comply with its laws absolutely to gain their beneficent effect. A break in the wire, and the current stops; imperfect insulation, and the current is grounded, and the electricity which could have produced such great results goes off into the earth and is lost.

How like grace, the mightiest power in the spiritual world!

IV. The warning.—And so the Church gives us this warning: ‘We then as workers together with Him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’ She does not merely exhort us to receive grace, but she warns us that, after we have sought it and received it, there is the danger of not using it. Pray then for grace; but pray also for grace to use the grace received; and watch for opportunities, not only of receiving it, but of using it. One of the laws of grace is that it only manifests itself in action. Therefore, ‘We beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.’

—Rev. Dr. A. G. Mortimer.

Illustration

‘Do you ask what this “grace of God” is? If a judge has condemned a murderer to death, and he knows no other than that in a few days he will suffer the last penalty of the law, and when he looks with fear and trembling for the dread appearance of the executioner, but instead a royal messenger appears with a reprieve and says, “Your king offers you life”—does he inquire what is the grace of the king? “Thou shalt surely die” is the sentence of the law, but the Son of God has appeared and offered life. This is the “grace of God,” which the minister as an ambassador of Christ offers to men. Some will not have this grace. Some receive it in vain.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

REALITY IN RELIGION

The Apostle warns us against what we fear is a very common fault in the present day. So many people seem to receive the grace of God, but it has no influence upon their lives, they receive that grace in vain. I want to say a word or two about the importance of sincerity and reality in religion. If we profess to have any religion at all, let us take great care that it is real.

I. What saith the Scriptures?

(a) Look at the parables of our Lord. The sower, the wheat and tares, the draw-net, the two sons, the wedding garment, the ten virgins, the talents, the great supper, the pounds, the two builders, contrast the true believer and the mere nominal disciple; all bring out in striking colours the difference between reality and unreality in religion, its uselessness and danger.

(b) Look at our Lord’s denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees; eight times in one chapter He denounces as hypocrites, in the most scathing words, men who, at any rate, were more moral and decent than the publicans and harlots. It was all intended to teach the abominableness of false profession and mere outward religion in God’s sight. Open profligacy and sensuality are indeed ruinous sins, if not flung aside; but there seems nothing so distasteful to Christ as hypocrisy and unreality.

II. There is hardly a Christian grace or virtue which has not its counterfeit described in the Word of God.

(a) There is an unreal repentance. Saul, Ahab, Herod, Judas Iscariot, had feelings of sorrow for sin, but they never really repented unto salvation.

(b) There is an unreal faith. Simon Magus ‘believed,’ yet his heart was not right in the sight of God. So also the devils ‘believe and tremble’ (Acts 8:13; James 2:19).

(c) There is an unreal holiness. Joash, King of Judah, became apparently very holy and good while Jehoiada lived, but at his death the king’s religion vanished (2 Chronicles 24:2). Judas Iscariot’s life resembled that of his fellow Apostles until he betrayed his Master; nothing outwardly suspicious, yet he was a thief and a traitor.

(d) There is an unreal love and charity. There is a love which consists in tender expressions, and a show of affection in which the heart has no part. So St. John exhorts: ‘Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth’; and St. Paul: ‘Let love be without dissimulation’ (1 John 3:18; Romans 12:19).

(e) There is an unreal humility. An affected lowliness of demeanour which covers a very proud heart (Colossians 2:18; Colossians 2:23).

(f) There is unreal prayer. Our Lord denounced this as one of the sins of the Pharisees: ‘for a pretence they made long prayers.’ Their sin did not consist in making no prayers, or short prayers, but unreal prayers.

(g) There is unreal worship. ‘This people draw nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honour Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me’ (St. Matthew 15:8). The fatal defect of the Jewish worship was its want of heart and reality.

(h) There is unreal religious profession and talk. In Ezekiel’s time, some talked like God’s people, ‘While their hearts went after their covetousness’ (Ezekiel 33:31). St. Paul tells us that we may ‘speak with the tongues of men and angels,’ and yet be no better than sounding brass and tinkling cymbals (1 Corinthians 13:1). These things show clearly the immense importance which Holy Scripture attaches to reality in religion.

III. See to it that your Christianity be genuine, thorough, real, and true.—Beware lest your Christianity consist of nothing but Churchmanship; that you base all on membership, on the fact that you have been baptized, married, and will be buried, according to her formularies, but have never followed her doctrine or lived the life of a true Churchman. Beware lest your Christianity consist of nothing but dissent; that while you boast, as do many, in the exercise of private interpretation of Scripture, and reject the Church’s authority; that while you profess to despise her ceremonial, her liturgy, her episcopate, your religion is sapless and dry as a dead tree, having neither grace, nor faith, nor repentance, nor personal holiness of life; Dissentianity and nothing more. ‘Unreality’ injures the cause of true religion, and gives occasion to God’s enemies to blaspheme; it is a counterfeit Christianity, an imposture, a cheat, a caricature, and worthless in the sight of God.

Bishop J. C. Ryle.

Illustration

‘You all receive the grace of God. The child has grace according to a child’s needs. The man or woman receives it according to the needs and temptations of adult life. Both the child and the grown person may obey it and follow it, or they may disobey it and walk otherwise than it bids. If they follow it, well; it has done its appointed work; but if not, then it has been “ in vain” for them. You have had it, and have made no use of it. It has done you no good, because you have resisted it. But yet you will have to give account for it at your judgment as a Divine gift wasted or misused. This will be the case with every degree and every kind of gift which we receive at the hand of God and do not improve.’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

TAKE HEED

Take heed that you do not receive the grace of God in vain.

I. The Holy Spirit is a continual guest.—You are called by Him very often and in many ways. Every blessing of this life that He sends you is a call to you to be grateful. Every painful accident or solemn death that takes place before your eyes or within your knowledge is a warning to you to live closer with God, and so prepare for your last end. These are providential calls—calls in which you may hear the voice of God Himself speaking through the toils and distractions of this world, and even by their means.

II. The Church has her calls to give, and for you to ponder well. It is the duty of God’s ministers to warn and to exhort each and all who will listen to us to flee from the wrath to come. Suffer me thus to warn you, that you receive not the grace of God in vain. Often and often, year by year, and day by day, you have received and are receiving this grace. How have you used it? That is the question. That will be the question to be asked and answered at the Day of Judgment. That therefore is the question you should ask yourselves now. What use have I made of God’s grace? Has it made me (you must ask) a humble, faithful, and consistent Christian? If not, then it has been in vain for me. All the opportunities I have had—faithful and pious teaching through a well-trained childhood and youth at school and at church, all the means of grace which have met me in rich profusion since my youth up—have they done their work with me and trained me in some measure into the likeness of Jesus?

III. It can never be pleasant to go back over one’s past life, raking up the old sins and failures which we had utterly forgotten, in order that we may repent of them and confess them to God and take more heed for the future. Yet how needful it is to do it! Would you wish to wait until it was too late to turn and amend? Do not you know how surely and how quickly those forgotten sins accumulate, to weigh upon your soul at the last? The more sins you keep out of sight and thought now, the more you will have to think of then. Persons who have been nearly drowned and afterwards restored to consciousness have said that just before they became insensible they seemed to perceive their whole lives unrolled before them. Sayings and doings of theirs which they had forgotten for many years came back to their memories with wonderful clearness in that moment of agony. So it often is—perhaps it is always—at the hour of death. Then old sins rise up to torment. Then the memory of duties neglected, of privileges misused, of grace received and wasted, is an inexpressible burden to the sad, weary, trembling, frightened soul.

Illustration

‘In the Eastern country there are great deserts of sand. For many miles in every direction you can see nothing but bare and barren sand. You might dig down and down, and you would still find nothing but sand, until you came to the hard rock. Nothing grows in these deserts; nothing can grow there. When the rain which brings greenness and fertility, grass and corn and palm trees, everywhere else falls on this barren sandy tract, it does no good at all. It just sinks in for a time, until the surface is baked again by the hot sun, and then it rises up again in vapour. Anywhere else it would clothe the soil with greenness; but here it is useless; it does no good. What a picture this is of the heart that receives and does not obey God’s grace!’