Matthew 25:29

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

‘Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.’

Matthew 25:29

The words of the text, if we did not know by Whom they were spoken, would perhaps suggest to us rather a sad and half-cynical maxim of the world’s philosophy than the law by which grace is bestowed by God for man’s discipline and recovery from sin.

I. A law of nature.—They are plainly true, indeed, as far as this world and its interests are concerned. ‘Nothing succeeds like success’ is a familiar saying. To him that has, to him does the world give.

II. A law of Christ.—But what if we find it also to be a law of Christ? For it has higher authority than the sanction of human society. It is a law of the spiritual world, a law of grace. God reveals Himself to men by degrees only as they are able to respond to His grace. The higher gift is only given to those by whom the lower gift has been used. If the revelation which God has given us of Himself be treated as if it were a dead system, then the power of understanding even that which has been already revealed is enfeebled. The faculty which is not used is lost. Is it not still true that it is to disciples, to willing learners, and to them alone—not to a gaping and careless multitude—that the vision of the Kingdom of God is brought near? What is it but beginning at the wrong end to vex ourselves with hard questions as to difficult points of doctrine, when perhaps we have not made our own the simplest teaching of the Gospel of the love of God?

III. Practice as well as theory.—The Lord applied the words of the text, not only to the reception of spiritual truth, but to the use of opportunity in all the details of life. They concern practice as well as theory. They give us the law of revelation; they give us also the principle of the Divine rewards. The man who has but one talent does not as a rule despise it. But then he says, It is not easy to use it in common life. He does not like to debase the talent which is his by putting it to vulgar uses. And so at last—oh! bitter irony—it is taken from him, even that which he thinks he has. Refusal to use opportunity results in loss of power.

Dean Bernard.