Gentleness (ascribed, under the same word, to Christ in 2 Corinthians 10:1) is the opposite of self-assertion and rivalry. Like 'patience' in James 5:8, it is enforced by the nearness of the Lord's advent, the prospect of which quenches worldly passions: cp. 1 Corinthians 7:29; Luke 12:29. Though we may not think of the second coming of Christ as at hand in the sense in which the first Christians did, our appearance at His judgment-seat is no less certain, and the thought of it should affect us in the same way.

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