2 Timothy 2:19 Nevertheless the foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, The Lord knows them that are his. And… It is as if Paul said, "Here are false teachers who, under a show of great spirituality, have overthrown the faith of some in the Church. They have come as angels of light. They have said, "The only real resurrection is the resurrection of a dead soul to the knowledge of God. Why trouble yourselves about any other resurrection except this?" And by these specious words — words which apparently only highly spiritual men could say — they have opened the flood-gates of unbelief; but God, after all, knows who are sound and who are rotten at heart. The Lord knoweth them that are His. The Lord sees through every pretence of sanctity. The sure foundation of God standeth, for God knows the souls who really and truly belong to Him. He knows them infallibly, and no one knows them but He. You see, St. Paul evidently implies that these falsely spiritual teachers, and those who were led by them, were not in heart God's true people. We learn from this that our faith may be subverted and our souls ruined by pretenders to spirituality in religion. We may extend this to our doctrines of the faith besides the resurrection of the body. The two sacraments, for instance, have each an outward part, which touches the body, or which is received by the body; and God has made the reception of the inward grace of the sacrament to depend, ordinarily speaking, on the reception of the outward sign. And now I have to put you on your guard against another form of specious yet false spirituality, with which a very large proportion of our modern religious literature is saturated. Beware of books and tracts, and appeals and sermons, full of deep doctrine and evangelical statements, without any duty — any lowly, common-place, homely Christine duty, mixed up with such doctrine or Gospel statements. No book of religion can possibly be more spiritual than St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. And yet, what sort of exhortations have we in the fourth chapter of this most spiritual Epistle? What I have said respecting the teaching of St. Paul is equally true of that of his brother apostles, SS. Peter, James, and John. Remember, then, that ii our standard of Christianity is the teaching of the apostles, then writings, full of high experience or sweet assurance, without any inculcation of lowly duty, are simply unscriptural, and so unspiritual. (M. F. Sadler, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. |
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