1 Timothy 4:10

We both labour and suffer reproach.

Trust in God the support of Christians in their labours and sufferings

I. The course pursued by the apostle and his brethren was one of labors and sufferings. If we must be reproached, let us not be reproached for evil-doing, but for well-doing: let us not have conscience against us, exasperating our sufferings; but secure in our conscious integrity and adamantine guard.

II. What it was that sustained the apostle and his brethren in the course which they pursued: it was the principle of confidence in God. “We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of them that believe.”

1. God is here regarded as “the living God”; that is, the true God, as distinguished from dumb and lifeless idols, described by the Psalmist as “having eyes that see not, ears that hear not, mouths that speak not, feet that walk not.” God appeals to this distinction, when He says, “As I live.” This suggests the idea of the infinite perfection of the Deity, and consequently His ability to protect His servants.

2. As “the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe.”

(1) “The Saviour of all men.” His mercies are over all His creatures.

(2) But in a far higher sense He is “the Saviour of those that believe.”

He saves them from consequences far more awful than any temporal calamities. Now, from the first of these views we infer that the power of God is pledged to assist His servants to do His will, and execute His commission: and, in whatever we do in obedience to God’s will, we have reason to depend on the support of Him who has ordered it to be done. And, in the next place, this may be especially applied to that part of God’s will, in which His glory is most concerned. In the gospel the honour of God is most of all concerned: men are to be saved by believing the gospel: therefore we may be confident that God will help them in all that relates to the success of the gospel: “He is the Saviour especially of them that believe.”

III. As improvements of this subject, observe--

1. How highly we should value that gospel, which the apostles preached amidst so much labour and suffering!

2. Imitate the apostles in their course of labours and sufferings. Be “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”

3. And, lastly, as the apostles were supported by trusting in the living God; so shall we also be, if we follow their example. If we trust in God, His favour will be our joy; if not, His comforts will fail us. (R. Hall, M. A.)

We trust in the living God.--

Trust in the living God

Trust--confidence--is an essential element of human nature. We begin life in a spirit of trust, and cling with confidence to our parents and the guardians of our infancy. As we advance in years, though deceived and betrayed, we still must anchor our trust somewhere. We cannot live without some being to lean on as a friend. Universal distrust would turn social existence into torture. We were born for confidence in other beings; and woe to him that cannot trust! Still confidence brings with it suffering; for all are imperfect and too many are false. Observe what a harmony there is between our nature and God. The principle of trust, as we have seen, enters into the very essence of the human soul. Trust seeks perfect goodness, Its natural tendency is toward an infinite and immutable being. In Him alone can it find rest. Our nature was made for God, as truly as the eye was made for the light of God’s glorious image, the sun.

I. What is the principle of religious trust? I would observe, that religious confidence rests on God’s parental interest in in individual persons. To apprehend and believe this truth is to plant the germ of trust in God. This truth is not easily brought home to the heart as a reality. The first impression given to a superficial observer of the world is, that the individual is of no great worth in the sight of the Creator. The race of man is upheld, and seems to be destined to perpetual existence. But the individuals, of whom it is composed, appear to have nothing enduring in their nature. They pass over the earth like shadows cast by a flying cloud, leaving for the most part as slight a trace behind. They break like meteors from the abyss, and are then swallowed up in darkness. According to this view, God is the Author of fugitive, mutable existences, from love of variety, multiplicity and development, however transitory these several existences may be. If we rest in such views of God, our confidence must be faint. Can we believe that human nature was framed by such a Being for no higher spiritual development than we now witness on this planet? Is there not, in the very incompleteness and mysteriousness of man’s present existence, a proof that we do not as yet behold the end for which he is destined; that the infinite Father has revealed but a minute portion of His scheme of boundless mercy; that we may trust for infinitely richer manifestations than we have experienced of His exhaustless grace? But there is another reply to the sceptic, and to this I invite your particular attention. Our trust, you say, must be measured by what we see. Be it so. But take heed to see truly, and to understand what you do see. How rare is such exact and comprehensive perception. And yet without it, what presumption it is for us to undertake to judge the purpose of an infinite and ever-living God. Whatever creature we regard has actually infinite connections with the universe. It represents the everlasting past of which it is the effect. He then, who does not discern in the present the past and the future, who does not detect behind the seen the unseen, does not rightly understand it, and cannot pass judgment upon it. The surface of things, upon which your eye may fall, covers an infinite abyss. Are you sure, then, that you comprehend the human being, when you speak of him as subjected to the same law of change and dissolution, which all other earthly existences obey? Is there nothing profounder in his nature than that which you catch sight of by a casual glance? Are there within him no elements which betoken a permanent and enduring existence? Consider one fact only. Among all outward changes, is not every man conscious of his own identity, of his continuing to be the same, single, individual person? Is there not a unity in the soul, that distinguishes it from the dissoluble compounds of material nature? And further, is this person made up of mutable and transitory elements? On the contrary, who does not know that he has faculties to seize upon everlasting truth, and affections which aspire to reach an everlasting good? Have we not all of us the idea of right, of a Divine law older than time, and which can never be repealed? Has such a being as man then no signs in his nature of permanent existence? Is he to be commingled with the fugitive forms of the material world? Seeing, you see not. What is most worth seeing in man is hidden from your view. You know nothing of man truly, till you discern in him traces of an immutable and immortal nature, till you recognize somewhat allied to God in his reason, conscience, love and will. Talk not of your knowledge of men, picked up from the transient aspects of social life! It is not then to be inferred, from what we see, that God does not take an interest in the individual, and that He may not be trusted as designing great good for each particular person. In every human mind He sees powers kindred to His own--the elements of angelic glory and happiness. These bind the heavenly Father’s love indissolubly to every single soul. And these Divine elements authorize a trust utterly unlike that which springs from superficial views of man’s transitory existence.

II. What is the good for which, as individual persons, we may trust in God? One reply immediately offers itself. We may not, must not trust in Him for whatever good we may arbitrarily choose. Experience gives us no warrant to plan such a future for ourselves, as mere natural affections and passions may crave, and to confide in God’s parental love as pledged to indulge such desires. Human life is made up of blighted hopes and disappointed efforts, caused by such delusive confidence. We cannot look to God even for escape from severest suffering. The laws of the universe, though in general so beneficent in their operation, still bring fearful evil to the individual. For what then may we trust in God? I reply, that we may trust unhesitatingly, and without a moment’s wavering, that God desires the perfection of our nature, and that He will always afford such ways and means to this great end, as to His omniscience seem most in harmony with man’s moral freedom. There is but one true good for a spiritual being, and this is found in its perfection. Men are slow to see this truth; and yet it is the key to God’s providence, and to the mysteries of life. Now how can man be happy but according to the same law of growth in all his characteristic powers? Thus the enjoyment of the body is found to be dependent on and involved with the free, healthy and harmonious development--that is the perfection--of its organization. Impair, or derange any organ, and existence becomes agony. Much more does the happiness of the soul depend upon the free, healthy and harmonious unfolding of all its faculties. Now for this good we may trust in God with utter confidence. We may be assured that He is ready, willing, and anxious to confer it upon us; that He is always inviting and leading us towards it by His Providence, and by His Spirit, through all trials and vicissitudes, through all triumphs and blessings; and that unless our own will is utterly perverse, no power in the universe can deprive us of it. Such I say is the good for which we may confide in God, the only good for which we are authorized to trust in Him. The perfection of our nature--God promises nothing else or less. We cannot confide in Him for prosperity, do what we will for success; for often He disappoints the most strenuous labours, and suddenly prostrates the proudest power. We cannot confide in Him for health, friends, honour, outward repose. Not a single worldly blessing is pledged to us. And this is well. God’s outward gifts--mere shadows as they are of happiness--soon pass away; and their transitoriness reveals, by contrast the only true good. Reason and conscience, if we will but hear their voice, assure us that all outward elevation, separate from inward nobleness, is a vain show; that the most prosperous career, without growing health of soul, is but a prolonged disease, a fitful fever of desire and passion, and rather death than life; that there is no stability of power, no steadfast peace, but in immovable principles of right; that there is no true royalty but in the rule of our own spirits; no real freedom but in unbounded disinterested love; and no fulness of joy but in being alive to that infinite presence, majesty, goodness, in which we live and move and have our being. This good of perfection, if we will seek it, is as sure as God’s own being, Here I fix my confidence. When I look round me, I see nothing to trust in. On all sides are the surges of a restless ocean, and everywhere the traces of decay. But amidst this world of fugitive existences, abides one immortal nature. Let not the sceptic point me to the present low development of human nature, and ask me what promise I see there of that higher condition of the soul, for which I trust. Even were there no sufficient answer to this question, I should still trust. I must still believe that surely as there is a perfect God, perfection must be His end; and that, sooner or later, it must be impressed upon His highest work, the spirit of man. Then I must believe, that where He has given truly Divine powers, He must have given them for development. Human nature is indeed at present in a very imperfect stage of its development. But I do not, therefore, distrust that perfection is its end. We cannot begin with the end. We cannot argue that a being is not destined for a good, because he does not instantly reach it. The philosopher, whose discoveries now dazzle us, could not once discern between his right hand and his left. To him who has entered an interminable path, with impulses which are carrying him onward to perfection, of what importance is it where he first plants his step? The future is all his own. But you will point me to those who seem to be wanting in this spirit of progress, this impulse towards perfection, and who are sunk in sloth or guilt. And you will ask whether God’s purposes towards these are yet loving. I answer: Yes! They fail through no want of the kind designs of God. From the very nature of goodness, it cannot be forced upon any creature by the Creator; nor can it be passively received. What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on! Thus have I spoken of religious trust, in its principle and its end. I have time to suggest but one motive for holding fast this confidence as a fountain of spiritual strength. We talk of our weakness. We lack energy, we say, to be in life what in hope we desire. But this very weakness comes from want of trust. What invigorates you to seek other forms of good? You believe them to be really within your reach. What is the soul of all great enterprises? It is the confidence that they may be achieved. To confide in a high power is to partake of that power. It has often been observed, that the strength of an army is more than doubled by confidence in its chief. Confide, only confide, and you will be strong. (W. E. Channing.)

Christly trust

First: Man is a trusting being. Trusting is at once the grand necessity and leading tendency of his existence. Secondly: His trust determines the character and destiny of his being. Trusting wrong objects or right objects for wrong purposes, is at once sinful and ruinous. On the other hand, trusting rightly in the living God is at once a holy and a happy state of being. Two remarks are suggested in relation to this Christly trust.

I. It forms a distinct community amongst men. The apostle speaks here as” those that believe.” All men believe. Men are naturally credulous.

1. There are some who believe in a dead God--an idol, a substance, a force, an abstraction. Most men have a dead God--a God whose presence, whose inspection, whose claims they do not recognize or feel.

2. There are others who believe in a “living God.” To them He is the life of all lives, the force of all forces, the spirit of all beauty, the fountain of all joy. With these the apostle includes himself, and to these he refers when he says, “Those that believe.”

II. It secures the special salvation of the good. The living God is the Saviour, or Preserver of all. He saves all from diseases, trials, death, damnation, up to a certain time in their history. All that they have on earth which go to make their existence tolerable and pleasant He has saved for them. But of those that believe He is specially a Saviour, He saves them--

1. From the dominion of moral evil

2. From the torments of sinful passions--remorse, malice, jealousy, envy, fear.

3. From the curse of a wicked life. What a salvation is this! Christly trust gives to the human race a community of morally saved men. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Who Is the Saviour of all men.--

The first Sunday after Epiphany

Whether, then, we take the words “the living God” in our text to apply to Christ Himself, or to the Father acting by Christ, it is equally asserted that Christ is the Saviour of all men: that the salvation which He wrought is, in and of itself, co-extensive with the race of man. What He did, He did for, and in the stead of, all men. If we wish to corroborate this by further Scripture proof, we have it in abundance. I will take but three of the plainest passages. St. John in his first Epistle, 1 John 2:1. St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:14. In Romans 5:10 he goes further into the same truth. See also 1 Corinthians 15:22. Adam, when he came fresh from the hands of God, was the head and root of man kind. He was mankind. She who was to be a helpmeet for him was not created a separate being, but was taken out of him. The words spoken of him apply to the whole human race. The responsibility of the whole race rested upon him. When he became disobedient, all fell. Figure to yourselves--and it is very easy to do so, from the many analogies which nature furnishes--this constitution of all mankind in Adam: for it is the very best of all exponents of the nature of Christ’s standing in our flesh, and Christ’s work in our flesh: with this great difference indeed, inherent in the very nature of the case, that the one work in its process and result is purely physical, the other spiritual as well. The race, in its natural constitution in Adam, i.e., as each member of it is born into the world and lives in the world naturally, is alien from and guilty before God: has lost the power of pleasing God: cannot work out its own salvation in or by any one of its members; all being involved in the same universal ruin. “In Adam all die.” Now that rescue must not, cannot in God’s arrangements, come from without. It must come upon mankind from within. God’s law respecting us is, that all amendment, all purifying, all renewal, should spring from among, and take into itself and penetrate by its influence, the inner faculties and powers wherewith He has endowed our nature. We know that our redemption was effected by the eternal Son of God becoming incarnate in our flesh. Now suppose for a moment that He, the Son of God, had become an individual personal man, bounded by His own responsibilities, His own capacities, His own past, and present, and future. If He had thus become a personal man, not one of His acts would have had any more reference to you or me than the acts of Abraham, or David, or St. Paul, or St. Peter have. He might have set us an example ever so bright; might have undergone sufferings ever so bitter; might have won a triumph ever so glorious; and we should merely have stood and looked on from without. No redemption, no renovation of our nature could by any possibility have been made. And He, thus being the Divine Son of God, and having become the Son of man, was no longer an individual man, bounded by the narrow lines and limits of His own personality, but was and is God manifest in the flesh; a sound and righteous Head of our whole nature, just as Adam was its first and sinful head. Hence it is, that whatever He does, has so large a significance. Hence, that when He fulfils the law, His righteousness is accepted as ours. He did nothing, if He did not the whole. He redeemed none, if He redeemed not all. If there existed on earth one son or daughter of Adam not redeemed by Christ, then He, who had taken it upon Him to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, had not accomplished His work, and had died in vain. And let us see what this universality of redemption implies, as regards the sons of men themselves. It enables the preacher of good tidings to come to every son and daughter of Adam, every out cast and degraded one of our race, and at once to lay before them Christ as theirs, if they will believe on Him. It is the key, and the only key, to the fact of justification by faith. “Believe, and thou shalt be saved.” Why? Believe in a Man who died and rose again, and thou shalt be saved? Now this at once brings us to the second part of our text. In the broad sense on which we have hitherto been insisting, Christ is the Saviour of all men: of the whole of mankind. All have an equal part and right in Christ. And on this foundation fact, the whole mission work of the gospel is founded. We are to go into all the world, and we are to pro claim the glad tidings to every creature. That redemption by Christ, which is as wide as the earth, as free as the air, as universal as humanity, is no mere physical amendment which has passed on our whole race unconsciously: but it is a glorious provision for spiritual amendment, able to take up and to bless and to change and to renovate man’s spiritual part, his highest thoughts, his noblest aspirings, his best affections. And these are not taken up, are not blest, are not renovated, except by the power of persuasion, and the bending of the human will, and the soft promptings of love, and the living drawings of desire. (Dean Alford.)

The Christ-likeness of God

In several texts God is called our Saviour. God, then, is to us what Christ is. God Himself, then, is essentially Christlike. He must have in Himself some Christ-likeness, for He is, as Christ, our Saviour. Let the energy of these two truths once enter into a man’s heart--the truth that in everything we have to do with the living God, and the truth that our God is the Christlike One, and they are enough to revolutionize a man’s life.

I. Our hope is set on the living God. This is a familiar Biblical phrase. This word, the living God, had not become an echo of a vanishing faith to the Psalmist, longing for the communion of the temple, who uttered Israel’s national consciousness in this prayer: “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.” It was a word intense with faith. A professor of chemistry, with whom sometime since I was talking about nature, and what it really is, said to me, thoughtfully: “The order of nature is God’s personal conduct of His universe.” It is not with a dead nature, or an impersonal order of laws, but with the living God in His personal and most Christian conduct of the universe, that we living souls have to do here and hereafter.

I. Our hope is set on the living God, our Saviour. It is a principle of far-reaching sweep and reconstructive power in theology, to think of our God above all as most Christlike in His inmost being and nature. I once saw in the city of Nurnberg, I think it was, a religious picture, in which God the Father was represented in heaven as shooting down arrows upon the ungodly, and midway between heaven and earth Christ, the Mediator, was depicted as reaching forth and catching those arrows, and breaking them as they fell. The painting was true to methods of conceiving Christ’s work of atonement into which faith had fallen from the simplicity of the Bible; but it should not be called a Christian picture. “God, our Saviour,” said apostles who had seen God revealed in Christ; and Jesus Himself once said: “He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.” It is one thing to obtain from the Scriptures some adequate doctrine of the divinity of Christ. But it is another thing to have God through Christ brought as a living and inspiring presence into direct contact with all our plans and work and happiness in life. In sincere acceptance of Jesus’ word that He knew the Father, and came from God, let us read the gospels for the purpose of learning what God Himself is towards us in our daily lives; how our world appears in the pure eye of God; how He thinks of us, and is interested in what we may be doing, suffering, or achieving. And He who opens His mouth, and teaches the multitude, utters God’s heart to us upon that mountain-side. This is God’s own blessedness showing itself to the world. Such is God, blessing with His own blessedness the virtue which is like His own goodness. Yes, but as Jesus, in His own speech and person, realizes God before us, how can we help becoming conscious of our distance of soul from perfection so Divine? He speaks for God. So God is towards man; this word is from the bosom of the Father; there is on earth Divine forgiveness of sin. But the fear of death is here in this world of sepulchres. We might love to love were it not for death. The worst thing about our life here is, that the more we fit our hearts for the highest happiness of friendships, the more we fit ourselves, also, for sorrow: love is itself the short prelude so often to a long mourning. What does God think of this? What can God in heaven think of us in our bitter mortality? Follow again this Jesus who says He knows--what will He show God’s heart to be towards human suffering and death? Lord, show us in this respect the Father, and it sufficeth us. There, coming slowly out of the gate of the city, is a procession of much people. We do not need to be told their errand; often we have followed with those who go to the grave. The Christ who says He knows what God our Father is and thinks, meets them who are carrying to his burial the only son of a widow. It is all there, the whole story of man and woman’s grief. The Christ sees it all; and more than all which disciples see;--He looks on through the years, and beholds death’s broad harvests, and the generations of men passing each from earth in pain and tears; the whole history of death through the ages He bears upon the knowledge of His heart. What will God do with death? “And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And He came nigh and touched the bier: and the bearers stood still. And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” It was not a miracle, but only an illustration beforehand of the larger law of life. While the widow wept, while the sisters of His friend Lazarus could not be comforted, Jesus knew that life is the rule in God’s great universe, and death the exception. Yes, this is a glad gospel from the bosom of the Eternal. This earth is full of human cruelty and oppressions. Let us go, then, once more with this Jesus into the city, and see what He will do with the Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. In the world from which He says He came, and into which He declares He is going soon--for a little while to be unseen by His own friends--in that world will He suffer these men to be? “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites;--How shall ye escape the judgment of Gehenna?” It is the same Christ who is speaking--He whom we heard saying, Blessed, and in words which seemed to be a song from the heart of His own life--He who went weeping with the sisters at Bethany--who once sent that procession of mourners back in triumph and joy to the city. It is He who now stands before those extortioners and hypocrites, and says in God’s name: “Woe unto you!” It is enough. The face of God is set against them that do evil. No lie shall enter the gates of that city of the many homes. Yes--but again our human thoughts turn this bright hope into anxiety. These men may not have known. We would go into the city and save all. We would let none go until we had done all that love could do; we would not suffer any man to be lost if love could ever find him? How, then, does Jesus show us what God is towards these lost ones? Listen; He sees a shepherd going forth in the storm over the bleak mountain-side, seeking for the one lost sheep; and this Wonder of divinity with man--He who came from God and knows--says, Such is God; “Even so it is not the will of your Father in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.” This is the picture of the heart of God drawn by Christ’s own hand--the shepherd seeking the one lost sheep. Two consequences of these truths remain to be urged. God Himself is to be seen through Christ, and Christ is to be studied through all that is best and worthiest in the disciples’ lives. Therefore through human hearts also which reflect in any wise Christ’s spirit, we may seek to realize what God is. God is what they would be, only infinitely better; His perfection is like man’s, only infinitely transcending it. Let us be very bold in this living way of access to God. (Newman Smyth, D. D.)

Jesus the Saviour of all men

St. Paul calls Him “the Saviour of all men”! Are all men, then, His people? Are not multitudes His enemies? Which witness shall I believe--the apostle, or the angel? Both of them! They do not gainsay each other. When you tell me that Dr. D. is the physician of this Poor-law District, you do not mean that he heals all the poor residing within his district, but only that he is appointed to heal them. His commission includes them all. Some may neglect to come to him, and others may prefer another doctor; but, if they will, they all may come to him, and have the benefit of his skill. In the same sense “Jesus is the Saviour of all men.” He is appointed to save all men--“Neither is there salvation in any other”! (J. J. Wray.)

Trusting in God

During the burning of a mill in our town there was a strong threatening of a large conflagration. People even two blocks off began to pack their household treasures. From many blocks around the coals from the flaming building were scattered over the white snow. From my window the scene was truly magnificent. The wild, hot flames soaring aloft, the burning elevator looking as if suspended in the heavens, the countless millions of sparks ascending, the sway and surge of this terrible power of fire. It seemed to me that a row of cottages within my sight must soon be swallowed up too, and as I thought of an elderly friend-helpless in her bed--I wrapped myself up warmly, and went out in the night to her. She was white and trembling with excitement, for the fire was only two buildings distant, and her room was light as day, illumined by the flames. “I was just wondering whether it was best to get her up upon her chair,” said the girl to me. “No, don’t,” I said, “I do not believe there is any danger, and if there is, she shall not suffer.” “Don’t you believe there is any danger?” asked the invalid as I reached her bedside. “No, I do not, unless the wind should change. Just lie still and don’t worry. If the next house should catch fire we will come for you the first thing.” She accepted our word and kept her bed, thus escaping a cold; and morning found her all right. I wonder, then, why we could not accept our loving, helpful Father’s word as unquestioningly as she did the word of a mortal. Why will we persist in borrowing trouble, when He has promised “As thy day so shall thy strength be”? Why do we always assert proudly, yet humbly, “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress; my God; in Him will I trust”? (E. Gilmore.)