2 Corinthians 7:1 Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit… "I was afraid... and hid thy talent" (Matthew 25:25); "Perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Corinthians 7:8). "I was afraid." Why? "Because I knew thee that thou art a hard man." Then our thought of God determines the character of our emotion, and shapes and regulates our lives. "Thou art a hard man... I am afraid." The emotion follows upon the conception; the terror waits upon the severity; the life takes shape from the thought. What think ye of God? The thought you make of God is the thought which makes you. That is not a matter of chance and caprice; it is a fixed law. Your thinking colours your living. If you think God hard, you will live a life of terror and gloom. If you think God effeminate, your life will be characterised by moral laxity. Mark, then, how deeply vital is the occasion when we give ideas of God to little children. We are putting into their lives germs of tremendous power. I have met with old men who in their later years have not been able to shake themselves free from the bondage of a false idea received in the days of their youth. In the days of Isaiah social life was putrid and corrupt. Men and women were passionate and licentious. Drunken carousals and luxurious indolence were the daily delight of ruler and ruled. Yet, even when life was most debased, religious worship was most observed. Their idea of God permitted and encouraged immorality in life. Such is the blasting potency of a false idea. But now what is the idea of God which begets this paralysing terror recorded in our text? The Scriptures tell us the servant had thought of God as a "hard man." Was the idea a true one? No; it was a false idea. Why? Because it was only partially true, and partial truth is falsehood. Is God severe? No. Is severity an element in His character? Yes. Is a ray of light of violet colour? No. Is violet colour an element in the composition of a ray of light? Yes. "God is light." You must not pick out the violet element, the darker element, the severity, the justice, and say, "This is God." He is these in combination with others, and only of the resultant combination can you say, "This is God." And yet that is how many people profess to know their God. They know an isolated feature, but not their God; and features, when torn from their relationship, may become repellent. Take a most beautiful face, a face in which each feature contributes to the loveliness of the whole. All the features combine to form a countenance most winning, Now lay the face on the surgeon's table. Dissect it; separate its various features, Immediately each feature loses its beauty and becomes almost repulsive. It is not otherwise with spiritual dissection. Yet how many men base their religion upon a feature, and not upon a face! One of the most religious men I have ever known is also one of the gloomiest. His mind is fixed upon God's severity and justice, and all things are regarded from their sombre and terrible side. The Bible is to him a book of terrible judgments. When I turn away from separate features and gaze upon God's countenance as portrayed in this book, I see it wears, not a threat, but a promise; not a scowl, but a smile; not a look of hardness, but the attractive look of love. But when a man has isolated a feature of God's countenance, and by isolation made it dark and forbidding, and then regards it as his idea of God, see what happens. It makes him afraid of God. It fills his life with terror and gloom. It paralyses his spiritual growth. All the most luscious "fruits of the Spirit" find no place in his life. God's severity is an element to be mixed with the soil, to help us in resisting the vermin of sin, but is never intended to constitute the bed in which we are to rear our flowers. If your leading, uppermost thought of God is His hardness, you will grow no flowers; they will every one be scorched; you will bring nothing to fruition. Your talents will never blossom into flower or ripen into fruit. To be afraid of God means a flowerless garden, an empty orchard, a barren heart. Now turn away from this hard conception of God, with its accompanying terror, to consider a life which is full of spiritual activity and growth. Here is a man, the aged Paul, at work "perfecting holiness"; that is to say, he is busy consecrating everything to his Lord. He wants every little patch in his life's soil to be used and adorned by some flower growing for his Lord. He wants no waste corners. Let us read the whole clause: "Perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Then is Paul afraid of God? The man of the parable was afraid of God, and so brought nothing to perfection. Paul is seeking to bring everything to perfection. Can these two attitudes be the same? Is it the same thing to be afraid of God and to fear Him? One was afraid of God because he thought Him "a hard man." What was Paul's idea of God? He uses an exquisitely tender word in telling us his conception of God, "the Father of Jesus"! Listen to his jubilant saying: "He loved me, and gave Himself for me." Was he afraid of Him? "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." Why, then, to fear the Lord is not to be afraid of the Lord, but to be afraid of sin. The fear of God is the God-begotten fear of sin. Beware of any conception of God which does not create in you a fear and hatred of sin. That is the only fear which God wishes our hearts to keep. Any other fear is powerless to accomplish His will. Men may be afraid of God, and yet may love their sins; and that is not living in the fear of the Lord! Now, how can we obtain this sensitiveness which will recoil with acute fear from all sin? You remember when Peter's eyes were opened to behold the foulness of sin, how he cried, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." He had seen the King in His beauty, and he felt the awfulness and the fearfulness of sin. (J. H. Jowett, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. |
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