03. Chapter 3: Christian Moderation
Chapter III CHRISTIAN MODERATION Php 4:5. — Let your moderation be known unto all m en. The Lord is at hand. The word moderation, in this verse, is not quite self-explanatory. With “moderation” we now associate ideas, some of them excellent, some inferior, which are not the idea of the original Greek word here. Moderation means sometimes the virtue of self-government; the moderate man is the well-controlled man, whose habits and feelings in common life are his servants, not his masters. On the other hand, moderation often means what is scarcely a virtue — an abstinence, constitutional or acquired, from all extremes in opinion or practice; a “not too much,” apoint de zele, carried into everything. The man thus moderate shuns and discountenances strong emotions, profound convictions, unsparing efforts; tends to look on evil with only a cool dislike, and on good with only a mitigated and philosophic love; is prepared to deal with great articles of faith, perhaps, as always open questions; certainly is unprepared to live and die in their defence. He dreads exceptions, and anomalies, and what is out of the main fashion of action and opinion. He prefers in everything what is called, rightly or not, “the golden mean. ”
Neither the virtue moderation, nor its counterfeit, is in view in this verse; most surely not the latter. Not that the Gospel here, or elsewhere, means therefore to inculcate a hot, untempered, inconsiderate enthusiasm. Indeed, enthusiasm is not a New Testament word; and no wonder, when we remember that its old connexion was with the frenzied excitements of the Greek worship of Bacchus. Enthusiasm is not indeed a word to be discarded. But yet it is a word which too often suggests hasty and ill-conceived resolutions, a flow of animal excitement very likely to ebb, a heat that outruns light. And all these things are things of nature, not of grace; of fallen not of regenerate humanity. The zeal and love of the Gospel spring from deeper and purer wells, have a serener flow, and are altogether nobler things than what commonly passes under the name of enthusiasm. But the Apostle here is looking in quite another direction. The word here rendered moderation in our Bible is connected by derivation and usage with ideas not of control, but of yielding. It is renderedLindigkeit, yieldingness, giving way, in Luther’s German Bible; and I fully believe the interpretation to be right. “Forbearance,” “gentleness,” are the alternative renderings of our Revised Version, and both suggest the thought of giving way. “Let your yieldingness be known unto all men; the Lord is near. ”
St. Paul is dealing throughout this passage with certain holy conditions necessary to an experience of “the peace of God keeping the heart and thoughts in Christ Jesus” (Php 4:1-7) Standing fast in the Lord, harmony and mutual helpfulness in the Lord, rejoicing in the Lord, and prayerful and thankful communion with the lord, are among these conditions. And with them, in the midst of them, appears this also; “Let your yieldingness be known unto all men; the Lord is near. ” This connexion with the deep peace of God throws a glory over the word and its precept. The yieldingness which is here enjoined is nothing akin to weakness, indolence, or indifference. It is a positive grace of the Spirit; it flows with the fullness of Jesus Christ.
What is it? We shall find the answer partly by remembering how, from another point of view, the Gospel enjoins, and knows how to impart, the most resolute unyieldingness. If anything can work the great miracle of making a weak character strong, it is the Gospel. Like nothing else, it can make the victim of sensual temptation turn his back decisively upon it. It can make the weak spirit which has habitually “saved itself trouble” by falsehood — and the merest avoidance of “trouble” is the motive of numberless falsehoods — immoveably loyal to truth, at all costs to ease. It can make the regenerate say “no” to self on a hundred points where never anything but “yes” was heard before. Nothing in the moral world is so immoveable as the will of a living Christian, sustained by the power of God the Holy Spirit, on some clear case of principle. I lately read of the uncompromising decision of a Christian man, in high military command in India, fifty years ago. He had accepted office, and £10,000 a year, being far from rich meanwhile in private means, on the condition that he should not be asked to give official countenance to idolatry. The condition was not observed. He was required to sign a grant of money to an idol temple. The East India Company would not give way, nor would their distinguished servant. He resigned his command promptly, and came home without a murmur, and without a compensation.
Here, in a conspicuous case, was the unyieldingness of the Gospel, a mighty grace which, thank God, is being daily exemplified in His sight in a thousand smaller instances.
Yet this very case equally well illustrates from another side the yieldingness of the Gospel. From the point of view of principle this admirable Christian was fixed as a rock, as a mountain; from the point of view of self-interest he was moveable as air. That it was a sacrifice of self’s gain and glory to resign was as nothing in his path. His interests were his Master’s. Jesus Christ was in him where by nature self is. He was jealous and sensitive for the Lord; indifferent, oblivious, for himself. If I understand aright, he did not resign with a flourish of trumpets, so to speak; he did not do it sullenly or bitterly; he did not come home in that most unhappy and inglorious character — a man with a personal grievance. Quietly, and in the way of Christian business, he withdrew from a post where he could not be loyal to his King and Saviour; this was all.
Yieldingness, in our passage, is in fact SELFLESSNESS. It is meekness, not weakness; the attitude of a man out of whom the Lord has cast the evil spirit of self. It is the discovery and practice of the blessed secret how to put Jesus Christ upon the throne of life, and let that divine fact within work upon the life without. It is the grace which manifests itself in a calm, bright, willing superiority of thought and purpose to considerations of self’s comfort, credit, influence. It is the noble, the blessed readiness to rejoice, for instance, in the success of others in the field of Christian work, as simply and naturally as in our own. It is the aim not to get a reputation, but to walk and please God; not to secure the applause of others, but to compass their good and blessing; not to vindicate our opinion, but only and purely our Lord’s word and truth; not to be first, but where He would put us — second, or third, or hundredth, if it is His will; not to get our rights for our sake, but to be loyal to His claims, and attentive for His sake, with scrupulous and kindly attention, to the rights and wants of others. It is a grace passive in form, if I may borrow a phrase of grammar, but active in meaning (1 Corinthians 13). It is holy Charity, at her work of suffering long and being kind; envying not, vaunting not herself, seeking not her own, being not easily provoked, not reckoning up the evil, rejoicing with the truth, bearing, believing, hoping, enduring all things, in the path of the will of God, the path of service of His Son.
It is a blessed thing to be a “moderate” in this sense. A living calm pervades that soul. A thousand anxieties, and a thousand regrets, incident to the life of self, are spared it. It is at leisure from itself, and therefore free for many a delightful energy and enterprise when God calls it in that direction, as well as ready for imprisonment and apparent inutility when that is His will. An example in point rises before me. I will name no name, for that would severely pain the “moderate man” I have in view. It is a life overflowingly active of which I am thinking; a mind and will quick to originate, vigorous to execute; a heart large in sympathies and in power of influence. But never, during the observation of years, have I been able to detect in this Christian’s words and works the presence of selffulness. The enterprises of others for God seem to be as interesting to him as his own. The success of his own seems to have no interest apart from that of serviceableness to Christ and His cause. And if failure ever comes it leaves no bitterness, for the effort was out of relation to self. This is not a very common characteristic of life and work in Christian circles. Alas, how often do we see, perhaps how often we ourselves present, the opposite! Let us put it down plainly before us that this is grievous sin, direct contradiction to the Gospel in its first principles, a most certain antidote to the peace of God which passeth understanding, and a stumbling-block, a scandal, disastrous beyond all our reckoning, in its effects on observers.
Nothing does the world’s microscope discover more keenly than selffulness in a Christian man or woman. Nothing at once baffles its experience and explanation, and attracts its notice and respect, like the genuine selflessness, the yieldingness, of the grace of God. Let ours, then, “be known unto all men”; not paraded and thrown into an attitude, but kept in practice and use in real life, where it can be put to real tests. And would we read something, in this same verse, of its heavenlysecret? It lies before us; “the Lord is near. ” He is near, not here in the sense of coming soon, but in that of standing by; in the sense of His presence, and “the secret” (Psa 31:20) of it, around His servant. The very words used here by St Paul occur in this connexion in the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the Old Testament, a translation old even in St Paul’s time; “Thou art near (
St Paul himself beautifully exemplifies his own words, in the same Epistle, in the first chapter (Php 1:15-18). The “brethren” at Rome who “preached Christ of envy and strife, supposing to add affliction to his bonds,” certainly took a very irritating line of action. And their action tried St Paul. But it did not irritate him. He saw, condemned, and deplored their motives. But he was not angry, he was not “hurt. ” On the contrary, he rejoiced. And why? Because, in however circuitous a way, the interests of Jesus Christ were being served. “Christ is being preached, and I therein do rejoice. ” The Lord was indeed near to His servant, near in the depths of his soul and will; and “moderation” could not but fill him in that presence.
Christian teacher, Christian worker, Christian partner, parent, student, servant, whosoever you are — “see that you abound in this grace also” (2Co 8:7). Forget it, and there will be a flaw running across your life and work for your beloved Lord. Remember it, in remembering Him, and you shall glorify Him indeed, and “sow the fruit of righteousness in peace” (Jas 3:18). So say I to you, so most of all say I to myself, in the name of Jesus Christ.