2 Corinthians 13:11-14 Finally, brothers, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace… I. THE TEXT SEEMS A VERY CONTRADICTORY ONE. 1. "Be perfect." We do not like that. Somebody says, "I do not believe in perfection." What you believe is very little matter. When God speaks it is of very little use to say, "I do not believe in perfection." I want you to say, "My God, what this perfection is Thou knowest, and I want Thee to give it to me." However, these words seem contradictory. "Be perfect." That seems as if the text took me up some slippery height and said, "That is where you have to get, and it is very few people who can get up there, only very clever mountaineers; and many who have got up have not been able to stay up there. They have come falling down again, and have talked about it all the days of their life." "Be perfect." Ah! most of us look up and sigh: "Yes, I very much wish I could be a better man than I am, but I cannot climb." When I went to see the Matterhorn, I said to the guide, "I suppose there are some people who climb that?" "Yes," said he, "a few." I looked at him and said, "When do you think I shall climb it?" and he looked at me and smiled. I said, "Well, I will tell you. When I can fly." That is how most people think about being perfect; they look at the top of that slippery height and say, "Yes, when I can fly." When we have done with earth, then there will be some hope for us. 2. "Be of good comfort." That seems to say, "Take it easy! If you are not as good as some people, never mind; you are not as bad as some are." II. WHAT WE WANT IS TO PUT THESE TWO THINGS TOGETHER. Let your ideal in Christ be as lofty and sublime as God's ideal is, and yet do not worry. The glory of Christ's religion is that it joins these two. There is many a heathen religion that has its ideal "Be perfect," but it is by torture. Here are the two hands of our God; the right hand of His righteousness that saith, "Be perfect," the left hand of His love that saith, "Be of good comfort." III. MANY PEOPLE LOSE BOTH BECAUSE THEY PUT THEM IN THE WRONG ORDER. It is a very common and mischievous religion, in which the whole aim is first of all "Be of good comfort" — a religion in which, when a man is converted, he is accustomed to say he is made happy. This religion is true enough until you push it to an extreme. There are thousands of young people in our churches who come home on a Sunday night and say, "Well, I think I'm saved, I feel so happy to-night," and on a Monday morning they get up and say, "I do not think I feel much happier than I did on Saturday," and they think they are lost again. 1. Now, is the idea of our religion, first of all, to make us feel happy? If so — (1) I can find a loftier idea of life outside religion. Come with me into Westminster Abbey. Here are buried heroes, travellers, explorers who defied death in a thousand shapes, and went through all sorts of perils and agonies. What cared they for feeling? They flung feeling to the winds, and said, "There, that is where I have got to get, and that is where I will go," and, nothing daunted, went and reached it. And here you get a very highly respectable tombstone, gilt, magnificent. Will you read the inscription? "Here lies a man who felt happy." Think of that as an aim in life. (2) It is a failure. Religion must, in order to make me perfectly happy, either change my nature, so that all circumstances shall minister to my happiness, or else so change my circumstances as that my nature shall find in them always that which makes me happy. Does it? I get the toothache; I find it pains me as much after conversion as before. (3) You would not deal with your children after that fashion. I have got a boy at home. I do not think he ever told me a lie; but think if, one day, he came all red-eyed and sobbing, and confessed to me, "Father, I have told a lie!" Now, should I say, "Well, my boy, I do not want you to feel like this. Run away; fetch out your marbles; I want you to feel happy"? Not a bit of it. I should want that boy to feel very miserable indeed. If Christ has only come to say to me, "Don't you trouble about sin, it is all right, I have settled that; now you go off. I want you to feel happy," — I say I should be a better man, if by all the anguish of the ages, there should be just wrought through and through me a great, deep abhorrence of the thing that is evil. You have not learned the first lesson of the Cross, if you have not seen brought right out and nailed up in the sight of heaven what God thinks about sin, how He hates it, and must sweep it right away. 2. What is the purpose of the true religion of Jesus Christ? It is to help us to think more of Jesus and to be more like Him. How do you pray? "O Lord, clothe me, feed me, take care of me, prosper me in business, make me more happy, and bring me home to heaven when I die, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." Well, your religion is simply a fattener of your selfishness. "But," you say, "does not it say, 'Give us this day our daily bread'?" Ay! but you have left something out. "Our Father, who art in heaven," etc. — all that first. That is what you are here for, that is why God gives us the crust of bread. That His name may be hallowed, that His kingdom may come, that His will may be done, "Give me this day my crust of bread." Thou must not ask for thy bread till thou hast put God in His right place. First, set Christ upon His throne; think "now I have got to glorify Him." What would that not do for the world? How quickly should the Church overtake the world when every man made the end of his religion not his own little self, not his own escape to heaven; but when the whole purpose of himself in everything and everywhere should be to make the whole world think well of Christ. IV. A GREAT MANY LOSE BOTH PERFECTION AND HAPPINESS BECAUSE THEY LEAVE OUT THE LORD'S PART ALTOGETHER. 1. Some great impulse seizes you, and you say, "Yes, that is what I have got to be, and that is what I will be." Take care. How long will it last? Ah, how soon we have said — for I have been one of them — "Well, it is no good; I cannot." We could not keep up the strain. If we cannot find something better to begin with than "I," let us give up. The moment I fetch in "I," I fetch in failure. There are some who do succeed. I have met with people who have made themselves perfect — the most dreadful people I ever knew, for they have narrowed and concentrated their whole thought upon themselves. They have begun to chip themselves and cut off their corners, and have made a hundred corners in cutting off one. They have sandpapered themselves, and sulphuric-acided themselves, and at last, after two, three, four, five years of that concentrated agony, and effort, and self-consciousness, they have brought out, what? Why, what else could you expect? from five to six feet of polished "I" — it is all "I, I, I." I cannot believe very much in perfection when I look at human nature; I believe in it less still when I look at myself; but when I look at Jesus I cannot help believing in perfection then. 2. "Be of good comfort," because it is not my straining and sacrificing and putting myself in the fire and melting myself and running myself out into a mould in the image and likeness of Christ; it is the getting away from myself, forgetting myself, bringing in a new consciousness. It is not my climbing the slippery height; it is Christ coming right down from that height to me, and saying, "Soul, this work is Mine, not thine; and I want thee to let Me come in and do it for you." "Be perfect" — yes, with such a Saviour. "Be of good comfort" — yes, because it is His work, not mine. It is saying, "My Lord! Thou shalt do it all." "Comfort" — what does it mean? "Co.," that means "company"; "fort," that means "strength" — strengthening by company. You can only spell holiness in five letters — J E S U S. Perfection is but letting Jesus have His own way with us in everything — Jesus, a perfect Saviour. My Master would not make an imperfect grass-blade, an imperfect daisy, an imperfect spider, and do you think He is going to let His perfect Son show all these things and that redemption shall show nothing of it? No. And now somebody will say to me, "Must not I do anything? For instance, if I am tempted to sin, must not I resist?" Well, I would advise thee not. "Well, but does not it say, 'Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist'?" I thought it did once, but I looked again, and I found before Peter says a word about that, he says, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God." Get right in under God's mighty hand, then turn round and say, "Now, devil, I am not afraid of thee a bit." The first thing you have to do before you resist is to run away to Jesus. (Mark Guy Pearse.) Parallel Verses KJV: Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you. |
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