Colossians 1:9-12 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you… I. WHAT IS MEANT BY ALL PLEASING? We are to please everybody that we may please God. 1. The wish to please or to be liked by everybody is a virtue or a sin according as it is a means or an end. If you please only to be admired it is selfish and has no religion in it. But if you wish to please that Christ may be liked, and that you may have more influence for good, then in pleasing others you will please God. 2. By this rule we reconcile St. Paul's apparent contradiction, "If I yet pleased men I should not be a servant of Christ," with "Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification." It is evident that we may, on the one hand, so make compromises in order to please that we shall not walk worthy of the Lord, and that on the other we may think we are walking worthy of the Lord by a strictness and severity which are certainly not unto all pleasing. 3. It would be quite a mistake to suppose that Christ did not please men. There were some, of course, He never tried to please — the proud and hypocritical. But he pleased the multitude. The record of his early life, is "He grew in favour both with God and man;" and afterwards "all the people rejoiced for the glorious things which were done by Him." II. HOW DID CHRIST PLEASE MEN? AND HOW MAY WE BY PLEASING LIKE HIM, WALK WORTHY OF HIM? 1. The first secret of all pleasing is humility. If you meet a man who is in everything your superior, and yet he treats you as if he were your equal without the least appearance of condescension, there is a charm in that which every one feels. This was exactly what Christ did and what we are to do. 2. Sympathy. It is the spring of all power to throw yourself into another's mind, look with his eye, feel with his touch, to do this with all, and with the countenance and manner as well as the word, and to be always respectful with your sympathy. This is the capability to please, and Jesus had it without measure. 3. That potent and rare art of seeing the good in everybody. Christ saw the Israelite indeed in the rude Nathaniel; He loved the impetuous, self-ignorant young man; and asked his Father to forgive His murderers since they knew not what they did. Is there then anything more Christlike than to see the germ of piety before it developes, the bit of blue on a dark sky, the excuse in every thing? He who knows how to do that "walks unto all pleasing." III. IT IS THE DUTY AND IN THE POWER OF EVERY ONE TO BE PLEASING. For to please does not depend upon the face, dress, form, riches, talents, wealth, etc, but upon moral character, tact, effort, and simple motive. (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; |
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