Notice the context. Christ says, according to the improved reading which will be found in the Revised Version: I know thy works, and love, and faith, and service' (or ministry), and patience, and that thy last works are more than the first.' That is to say, the great way by which we can secure this continual growth in the manifestations of Christian life is by making it a habit to cultivate what produces it, viz., these two things, charity (or love) and faith.
These are the roots; they need cultivating. A Christian man's love to Jesus Christ will not grow of itself any more than his faith will. Unless we make a conscience by prayer, by reading of the Scriptures, by subjecting ourselves to the influences provided for the purpose in His word, of strengthening our faith and warming our love, both will dwindle and become fruitless, bearing nothing but leaves' of barren though glittering profession. You need to cultivate faith and love just as much as to cultivate any other faculty or any other habit. Neglected, they are sure to die. If they are not cultivated, then their results of service' (or ministry') and patience' are sure to become less and less.
These two, faith and love, are the roots; their vitality determines the strength and abundance of the fruit that is borne. And unless you dig about them and take care of them, they are sure to die in the unkindly soil of our poor rocky hearts, and blown upon by the nipping winds that howl round the world. If we want our works to increase in number and to rise in quality, let us see to it that we make an honest habit of cultivating that which is their producing cause--love to Jesus Christ and faith in Him.
And then the text still further suggests another thought. At the end of the letter I read: He that overcometh and keepeth My works to the end, to him will I give,' etc.
Now mark what were called thy works' in the beginning of the letter are called My works' in its close. And it is laid down here that the condition of victory, and the prerequisite to a throne and dominion, is the persevering and pertinacious keeping unto the end of these which are now called Christ's works' --that is to say, if we want that the Master shall see in us a continuous growth towards Himself, then, in addition to cultivating the habit of faith and love, we must cultivate the other habit of looking to Him as the source of all the work that we do for Him. And when we have passed from the contemplation of our deeds as ours, and come to look upon all that we do of right and truth and beauty as Christ working in us, then there is a certainty of our work increasing in nobility and in extent. The more we lose ourselves and feel ourselves to be but instruments in Christ's hands, the more shall we seek to fill our lives with all noble service; the more shall we be able to adorn them with all beauty of growing likeness to Him who is their source.
There is still another thing to be remembered, and that is; that if we are to have this progressive godliness we must put forth continuous effort right away to the very close.
We come to no point in our lives when we can slack off in the earnestness of our endeavour to make more and more of Christ's fulness our own. But to the very last moment of life there is a possibility of still larger victories, and the corresponding possibility of defeat. And, therefore, till the very last, effort, built upon faith and made joyous by love and strongly the grasp of His hand, must be the law for us. It is the man that keeps His works' and persistently strives to do them to the' very end' that overcomes.' And if he slacks one moment before the end he loses the blessing that he otherwise would have attained.
"Forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth unto the things that are before,"must be our motto till the last. We must ever have shining far before us the unattained heights which it may yet be possible for our feet to tread. We must never let habit stiffen us in any one attitude of obedience, nor past failures set a bound to our anticipations of what it is possible for us to become in the future. We must never compare ourselves with ourselves, or with one another. We must never allow low thoughts, and the poor average of Christian life, in our brethren, to come between us and that lofty vision of perfect likeness to Jesus Christ, which should burn before us all as no vain dream, but as the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning us.
And if, smitten by its beauty, and drawn by its power, and daily honestly submitting ourselves to the accumulating influences of Christ's long experienced love, and enlisting habit upon the side of godliness, and weakening opposition and antagonism by long discipline and careful pruning, we press toward the mark for the prize of the higher calling of God in Jesus Christ,' we shall be like the wise householder that keeps the best wine until the last,
And in old age, when others fade,
And then death itself will but continue the process that has blessed and ennobled life, and will lead us up into another state, whereof the latest works shall be more than the first.'
