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I. SENSES IN WHICH THIS IS TRUE.

1. That of personal influence over our fellows.

(1) Many a godless man is encouraging himself in the way to perdition by some foolish or sinful word or deed of a professing Christian; and also many in whom all that is good dates from some solemn word said by a believer who never knew what that word was to do. And the humblest exercises this influence just as truly as the mightiest. The little child that died before it ever spoke an articulate sentence may have done more than the wisest and greatest to permanently affect the whole character and life of its parents. There is a sense in which the most selfish man cannot live and die to himself. He will influence by the tone and atmosphere of his life. Every professing Christian is an epistle known and read of all men. By his entire life he is saying, "One thing is needful: seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness"; or else, "All these things are very well to talk of, but give me the main chance."(2) And as we cannot live, neither can we die to ourselves. Our death is the testing-time of all our life, the thing that fixes the character of it all. And what different influences come from different deaths! Think of the hardening effect of a death of which you say, "Ah, he's gone; no great loss to anybody but himself"; and then think of the effect of a death about which you say, "Well, religion must be a real and wonderful thing to have kept a man up in suffering as it did there!" And very naturally Balaam's wish will follow.

2. That of mutual dependence. The work of many of you is rather for your children than for yourselves: and even the young should know that their parents' happiness is dependent on their turning out well. Effects, reaching to millions of people, come of causes in human beings thousands of miles away, and never seen nor known. A fancy, in a savage race, for some article of British manufacture, will increase the comforts of many homes in a great manufacturing town. Or a people arise in war for slavery; and the consequence is felt in trade and religion all over the world. We are gradually finding out that the welfare of one race or nation is the welfare of all. We are learning to cast away the infidel question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and are learning instead those wise words of a heathen, "I am a human being, and I feel that I have something to do with everything human!" which are an echo of St. Paul's. Yes, my friend, there are some who could not do well for a while yet without you. There are those whom almost every human being would miss if he were taken away. Very few lives could be quenched without loss and grief to some one.

II. THE SENSE IN WHICH PAUL MEANT IT.

1. The text is a step in an argument. Paul has been arguing for toleration, and showing that though men may differ on points short of the great essential doctrines of salvation, they may yet be conscientious and devoted Christians. So we are to recognise as Christians all whom God would recognise. Everything the true Christian does, the apostle says he does as for his God and Saviour. "For none of us liveth unto himself," etc. And thus the great truth taught is that the Christian does not live to himself in the sense of thinking mainly of self. His will is subordinated to God's; his great end is not to get on in life, but rather "to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever." Now, in this sense of the phrase, many do live entirely to themselves and not at all to God. There are people who could not seriously say that, from Monday morning to Saturday night, they bestow any real thought on anything beyond the horizon of this world.

2. Here, then, we have a test by which to try the reality of our Christian profession and character. Would it be a safe thing for any one to say to this congregation, We differ one from another in a great many respects; but there is one thing in which we are all agreed, "None of us liveth to himself, and none of us will die to himself!" We are all living and will die to God. But this great test is one that is thoroughly accepted by people who are not Christians, who hold very cheap the fair words of the man in whom all is tainted with the plague-spot of selfishness. The great secret of usefulness is the ceasing to live to yourself! "They glorified God in me," said St. Paul of those who heard of his conversion; and God shall be glorified in each of us, whether in life or in death, if we be truly devoted to Him.

(A. K. H. Boyd, D.D.)

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KJV: For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

WEB: For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself.