Philippians 2:16

Philippians 2:16

In the very act of working out his own salvation, if he be rightly taught what the charge means, a man will be, incidentally at least, holding forth or applying to others the word of life. This is true in some measure. But so prone are we all to selfishness, so prone to religious selfishness when we are driven out of the selfishness which is altogether indolent and worldly, and so many are those who would foster this spiritual selfishness by precepts distorted from the Gospel, that it is necessary to give reality and prominence to the charge before us by examining it separately and in detail.

I. Your work on earth is not done when you have saved yourself from an untoward generation. You have still to hold your lamp as far as you can into the dark mass around. God does not call you to a timid, fugitive, skulking piety, a religion which has to lock its doors and bar its windows, that it may be alone by itself in the sight of a God who seeth in secret. There is a part of it which has to do this; to be worth anything even for purposes of diffusion, the lamp must be kindled in secret, and fed in secret, and trimmed in secret; we can soon tell those whose religion has no such seclusion; but the office of the lamp is to shine. Men do not light a candle to put it under a bed, but to set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all that are in the house. Even so it is with the Christian's lamp, which is the word of life.

II. Note two of our modes of influence. (1) Example. There is no engine so powerful in its effects upon human life. (2) Sympathy. There is a way of presenting the Gospel, in word and even in example, which wholly fails to attract or to persuade. He that winnethsouls is wise, not he that alarms, or he that drives, or he that coerces and constrains, but he that winnethsouls. It becomes one who would discharge his conscience in this matter to examine not only the correctness, but the attractiveness, of his example.

C. J. Vaughan, Lectures on Philippians,p. 135.