To encourage Christians to grow and improve in the fore-mentioned virtues and graces, our apostle here lays before us, 1. The great advantage of such. proficiency and growth; If these things be in you and abound, that is, the fore-mentioned graces, they will both cause you, and evidence you not to be barren and unfruitful in your profession of Christianity and faith in Christ: the exercises of divine graces are the best evidenves of our being made partakers of the divine nature.

Observe, 2. The miserable state of those whose faith is not fruitful in good works; He that lacketh these things, that is, who doth not live in the exercise of the afore-mentioned graces, is spiritually blind, and really destitute of that knowledge which he pretends to, blinded by his passions and lusts, and sensual affections, and sees not the great end and design of Christianity, forgetting that in baptism he solemnly vowed all this, and that he was sacramentally washed from his old sins.

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Old Testament