1 Peter 5:6

1 Peter 5:6

Christian Work and Christian Rest.

I. Half, and more than half, of the practical faults in the world arise from looking upon life in a false view, and expecting from it what God does not mean us to find in it. It may be that many persons, when reading attentively our Lord's life and studying His language, are greatly surprised at the absolute unworldliness of both of them. He to whom all things future are as present suited both His life and His words to what He knew would be ever the chief error of mankind. He knew that social and civil activities were sufficiently natural to man to need no encouragement. He knew that knowledge would be pursued, and arts and sciences cultivated. But He knew that the kingdom of God and His righteousness would not be sought after. He knew that men would look carefully enough on the things of this life, but would care for little beyond it.

II. For ourselves then, and for our children, life is before us as a trial-time of uncertain length, but short at the longest, in which we may fit ourselves, if we will, for the eternal life beyond it. This is life to each of us, and this is our proper business; all the rest that we do or can do, however splendid, however useful, is, or should be, done only subordinately. It is not true that our great business or object in the world is to do all the good we can in it; our great business and object is to do God's will, and so to be changed through His Spirit into His image that we may be fit to live with Him for ever. This, then, is Christ's daily lesson to us: not to be idle and slothful in our work, and to sanctify it by doing it as to Him, and not as to men; not to be idle as those who have mere bodily faculties, who live only to eat, to drink, to sleep; not to be too busily and carefully engaged in our own labour, and still less for its own sake, as those who live only for themselves and for this world, and to whom God, and Christ, and eternal life have never been made known. Let us work earnestly, for so did Christ; but let us work also as doing God's will, and for the improvement of our own souls, or else our work will not be such as He will acknowledge at His coming.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 173.