1 Corinthians 3:22 Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; I. LIFE IS YOURS. 1. It is obvious that St. Paul does not mean that any one is supreme over the events or circumstances of his life. Save in so far as virtue conducts to health and prosperity, there is, in this sense, but one end and course to the righteous and the wicked. 2. St. John wrote in Patmos, "He hath made us kings." This royalty was untouched by transportation and imprisonment. This is a sufficient commentary upon the text. Life is yours still, whatever its condition. You are not its slave because it is adverse. The man who can say, "I have learned the great secret, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content"; "I am in the hand of God, and God is my Father" — is a king in reference to that life, and every part of it. But this empire of the man over his own life is the privilege of him alone who recognises Christ's empire over him. "Life is yours, and ye are Christ's." Give yourself to Him, and then life is yours. (1) For enjoyment. A Christian living his Christianity is a happy man. He has a sense of safety, of independence, of dignity, and of tranquility, in his life; and those two other delightful things, the sense of being cared for, and the sense of having a secret — "For the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him" — a secret of explanation, and (better still) of confidence, between himself and One "whom to know is eternal life" — which must give a joy to the most sorrowful of his experiences, and fully justify, in point of happiness, the apostle's saying to him "Life is yours."(2) For improvement. If to be conscious of growth in anything, knowledge of a language, or skill in a game, or insight into a science, &c., is one of the purest pleasures of which this human nature is capable — what must it be to know oneself the recipient of Divine grace, for illimitable progress in all that is beautiful and lovely and of good report? (3) For communication. When once the thought has entered, "I am not my own, I am Christ's, and Christ is God's," with it there comes the recollection, I am not only the recipient, I am also the transmitter of life. You can help others to live. Your very look and voice may be a help to them. Your happiness, strength, integrity, loving and holy influence, may, through grace, quicken into newness of life some dead soul. II. DEATH IS YOURS. 1. Who shall echo this? Who that has seen death can do so with any feeling of truth? No, rather we say, as St. Paul (in a different connexion) says, Death reigns. Death is the limit of our free action, as well as the terminus of our long journey. All may be ours up to death, but not further. 2. How shall we interpret this which is here written as to our ownership of death? (1) Your own death is yours.(a) Death is the master of the fallen being, as fallen. It makes every plan precarious. How soon must this right hand lose its cunning! There is not a purchase which can be more than a few years' possession, because of this reign of death over the individual. Hence that feverish eagerness in crowding two years' work or ten years' work into one.(b) It is into existences thus circumstanced that St. Paul bears the startling explanation of the gospel, "Death is yours." Instead of thus cowering and grovelling before the grim phantom, play the man. Death is yours. Take it betimes for your possession, and it shall be great gain. Look to it as the goal and prize of your being; expect it as the admission into a presence which is the fulness of joy, and you will find its very name and nature transfigured. See it as the gate of life, and it shall be yours, not you its, while you live; and it shall be yours, not you its, when you come to die. (2) The death of others is yours.(a) We are apt, by fallen nature, to see ourselves cruelly vanquished by the onslaught of death upon those we love. Many who could face their own death with something better than fortitude, are yet conquered by death when he assails them through another.(b) Yet in Christ we still own the dead. They are ours, not in hope only of reunion, but in possession too and fruition. Our richest stores of all must surely be those which are the most safely garnered. Our most real heirlooms are the memories and the affections of the dead. Death has set his seal upon them. What they were, in faith and patience, in wisdom and beauty, in grace and love — that are they for ever, that are they to us. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; |
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