1 Corinthians 4:20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. God has put truth into word, and so given us a Bible, for the purpose of making the Divine a practical working factor inside each man's own individual life; so that by virtue of it we become organs of God, and young incarnations. A man is not a man fully and fairly until his own energies gain their final touch of effectiveness through the power of God working within him to will and to do of the Divine good pleasure. Inspiration is permanent; only in one case it covers the Spirit of God going forth into the forms of lettered truth; in another into forms of thought, feeling, purpose, and power through personal instrumentality. Inspired power to write a Divine Bible; inspired power to live a Divine life; inspired power to conceive or achieve a Divine purpose — each of them is as a separate coloured ray that issues into the air after its passage through the prism of the human spirit; but one of these just as much as another sprung out of the original white beam of the Spirit of God. To be a Christian, then, is to live with a Divine life; and to secure that result is the object which God had in giving to us a book — an instrument, therefore, whose prime value lies only in its competency to contribute to the realisation and maintenance in men of the Spirit of God as the law and the material of life. (C. H. Parkhurst, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. |
    |