December 7

God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, out ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. - Romans 6:17.

MACKNIGHT and other modern translators have rendered this passage, “Ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine into which ye have been delivered.” The allusion is to melted metal. When this is poured into the mould it does not come out as it went in, but brings out the image of the model; and as it is employed by the Apostle it means that, under the agency of the Spirit, we are softened from our natural hardness to receive Divine impressions, and that we, who were by nature the servants of sin, are fashioned and changed into the very character of the gospel, so that we realize it, embody it, render it visible and palpable; so that we “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.” Not by adding anything to it, but by showing what it is in itself.

Yes, whatever the gospel be, we are required to copy it. If the gospel be light we are to be illuminated; if it be salt we are to be seasoned; if it be love we are to be loving and lovely; if it be holiness, how holy and happy ought we to be; if it be truth and grace we are to be truthful and gracious, for truth and grace are to be displayed by us; and our tempers, our speech, and our carriage are to be distinguished by it.

There are some who have clear views and firm convictions, and who are sincere and open in their profession, who are the “children of the light and of the day;” that is, they are all truth; but then they are not kind, not tender, not forbearing, not forgiving; they do not restore a fallen brother in the Spirit of meekness; they despise the day of small things; they are not all the gospel of the grace of God requires.

The perfection of Christian character comes from the union, the harmony, and the proportion of these excellencies.

Why in our zeal for orthodoxy should we renounce charity and candour? Is it not possible to combine these? Why cannot mercy and truth meet together? “Righteousness and peace kiss each other,” in ourselves as well as in our creed. Are we not commanded to “seek the truth and peace;” to “speak the truth in love?” And did not the Apostle exclaim, “Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity?”

Let us therefore seek to unite all the excellencies of the Christian character, and to display them in the world, in the church, in the family, in all the habitual intercourse of life, and be thus “manifestly the epistles of Christ, known and read of all men;” full of “grace and truth.”