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It is a sure law that, as Luther said, "He who is a Christian is no Christian." He who thinks that he has gained the fulness of the faith has lost it. Progress is a requirement of spiritual vitality; and the recompense of past progress is the assurance of progress to come. In the words of a famous Hebrew saying, "The reward of a precept is a precept." He, that is, who has fulfilled one commandment is allowed to receive another. He who has reached one height of truth catches a glimpse of a loftier height beyond. Each attainment in the Divine life becomes the occasion for the revelation of fresh duty. The crown of labour for a being such as man is not rest but longer and nobler toil. It is true, we know, that to him that hath more shall be given. And it is no less true that of him that hath done much shall more be required. Each achievement of the successful worker was indeed God's gift. And what we receive, what we realize, what we gain — however we call the process — is not for contemplation, or for hoarding, but for further service. What is reaped supplies the seed corn for a richer harvest. The gifts of God answer to His requirements, and the requirements of God answer to His gifts. "Grace for grace" — grace to be used in return for grace already used — is the law which regulates God's blessing; "from strength to strength" is the description of the Christian's course. "We must abound more and more." We must seek untiringly for signs of growing nearness to God, and show what we have found. The trained eye learns to see beauties which were once undistinguished. The trained ear learns to interpret voices which were once inarticulate. And is it so — do we confidently trust that it always will be so — spiritually with ourselves? Are we able as the years go on to fix our eyes more steadily on God, shrinking with livelier sensibility from sin more than from suffering, realizing our fellowship one with another in Him with a more intense vividness, looking, and showing that we look, beyond the wild confusion of the hour to the one will of peace and righteousness which cannot at last want accomplishment? Are we able to listen to the Divine wisdom conversing with us as with sons in the words of apostles and prophets, speaking to us in our own tongues, interpreting our own thoughts, answering the questions with which our hearts are full? Are we able to rest with increasing peace in the contemplation of Him who is perfect light, and to bring before Him who is perfect compassion the unceasing prayer of sympathetic remembrance for all with whom we are united as fellow workers in the present and as fellow heirs of the future? Are we able to pause in the solemn stillness of thought till we are alone with God, and to offer ourselves to the fire of His love; that so little by little all may be consumed in us — all passion and pride, all self-seeking and self-trust — which does not minister to His glory, which does not, that is, make clearer to men His infinite perfection? Are we able to regard the world in its unspeakable vastness, life with its inevitable sorrows, nature with its contrasts (to our eyes) of beauty and terror, or grace and mocking grotesque ness, as even now gathered up in Christ, and seek for ourselves the development of every faculty by which we may be taught to spell out better the One Name written in all that is finite? We tremble perhaps as we put such questions to ourselves. But they stir us at least with a sense of what our faith is. They make plain to us to what we are called. They show an obligation to progress, a capacity for influences of which, it may be, we are habitually unmindful. They condemn us perhaps. But the sentence of condemnation is the message of hope. It is a revelation of God's love as well as of man's failure. The strength for service and the opportunities for service are still given to us through the gospel.

(Bp. Westcott.)

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KJV: Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.

WEB: Finally then, brothers, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, that you abound more and more.