Proverbs 4:18 But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shines more and more to the perfect day. I. THE CHARACTER OF THIS MAN — the just man. A just or righteous man is he who conforms himself to the laws of God's government over men. The perfectly just man is he who has never in any matter trampled upon the rule of life laid down by the all. wise God, and who continues to walk onwards by the same perfect rule. But no such character is to be found among men. The all-wise God has found out a way whereby He may be just and the justifier of them that believe in Jesus. All the righteousness and merit of God's own Son becomes theirs. The child of faith is the only just man. II. THE STARTING-POINT OF HIS LIFE-COURSE — from dawn. 1. The believer is likened to the light, inasmuch as now he has attained to wisdom, holiness, and happiness. Light, as symbolical of the good, speaks to us of the enlightenment of the understanding, the purity of holiness, and true happiness. Light is also significant of natural good, of happiness. 2. The believer is likened to the shining light, or the bright dawn of morning. This figure speaks to us of the transcendent beauty of holiness. It is the heavenly ideal of all that is bright and fair and fresh. III. HIS ACTUAL COURSE — shineth more and more. Growth is the one grand law in the kingdom of light. The believer at his new birth is but a babe in Christ. The children of the kingdom grow from strength to strength. Where there is no growth there is no life. Perfect manhood, "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," is the goal short of which no child of the Father dare stop. Every being grows according to the measure of his own inward nature, and so does the child of God. This Divine necessity of the Christian's growth is symbolised by the figure of the text. The Christian's growth, like all growth, is gradual; it even proceeds often by means of apparent retrogressions. Often the Christian seems to retrograde. Yet even from a sad eclipse he will come forth, shining with a fuller splendour of blessed light. IV. HIS GOAL — everlasting noon — the "perfect day." From the path of the just all shadows of the darkness shall pass away. Children of light though we be, we are often doing the deeds of darkness and walking in the dark and cloudy day of trial. But it shall not be so always. A Godlike purity, and God Himself as our joy, constitute the two elements of the light of the perfect day, into which our faith and patience grow more and more. (James Hamilton, M.A.) Parallel Verses KJV: But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. |
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