That ye, always having all-sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.'
That is what God gives us His grace for; and that is a very important consideration. The end of God's dealings with us, poor, weak, sinful creatures, is character and conduct. Of course you can state the end in a great, many other ways; but there have been terrible evils arising from the way in which Evangelical preachers have too often talked, as if the end of God's dealings with us was the vague thing which they call salvation,' and by which many of their hearers take them to mean neither more nor less than dodging Hell. But the New Testament, with all its mysticism, even when it soars highest, and speaks most about the perfection of humanity, and the end of God's dealings being that we may be filled with the fulness of God,' never loses its wholesome, sane hold of the common moralities of daily life, and proclaims that we receive all, in order that we may be able to maintain good works for necessary uses.' And if we lay that to heart, and remember that a correct creed, and a living faith, and precious, select, inward emotions and experiences are all intended to evolve into lives, filled and radiant with common moralities and good works '--not meaning thereby the things which go by that name in popular phraseology, but' whatsoever things are lovely, and of good report'--then we shall understand a little better what we are here for and what Jesus Christ died for, and what His Spirit is given and lives in us for. So good works' is the end, in one very important aspect, of all' that avalanche of grace which has been from eternity rushing down upon us from the heights of God.
There is one more thing to note, and that is that, in our character and conduct, we should copy the giving grace.' Look how eloquently and significantly, in the first and last clauses of my text, the same words recur. God is able to make all grace abound, that ye may abound in all good work.' Copy God in the many-sidedness and in the copiousness of the good that flows out from your life and conduct, because of your possession of that divine grace. And remember, to him that hath shall be given.' We pray for more grace; we need to pray for that, no doubt. Do we use the grace that God has given us? If we do not, the remainder of that great word which I have just quoted will be fulfilled in you. God forbid that any of us should receive the grace of God in vain, and therefore come under the stern and inevitable sentence, From him that hath not shall be taken away, oven that which he hath!'
