The great question, therefore, for us to consider is, In what way may we glorify God? And the answer is given in the words of our Lord Himself, as written in John, xv. 8: ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.’ You will observe that it is not merely by feeling, or even by communion with God, but by fruit. I know that joy and peace are amongst the first-fruits of the Spirit, and God forbid that I should say one word that could possibly be understood as spoken lightly of such a gift as communion with God! It is the most sacred privilege that it is possible for a ransomed spirit to enjoy, and nothing but the finished ransom could ever admit us to it. But we must not confound it with the fruit that springs from it, or suppose that to enjoy communion is the same as to be holy. The sap is essential to the life of the tree, but the sap is not the fruit, and there is a great deal of sap in many trees where there is no fruit at all. The fruit is something practical, something contributed, and if it glorifies God, it will be visible to our fellow-men. So our Lord said (Matt. v. 16), ‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’
Nor must we confine it to a victory over sin. I sometimes meet with books in which this victory appears to be described as the sum and substance of holiness. Now I do not doubt for one moment that it is a part of it; but it is only a part: the negative side, and not the positive. It would not satisfy your mind to be assured there were no thorns on your roses, or no poisonous berries on your vines; you want flowers on the rose, and grapes on the vine. I do not know that there was any harm in the fig-tree that stood by the way-side from Bethany: I never read that it yielded poison; but it bore no fruit, and the Lord withered it. So it is that we stop utterly short of the true character of Christian holiness if we describe it simply as a victory over sin. Suppose that we really had overcome, and that there had been such a conquest in deed, in word, and in thought, that we should have no occasion for the confession, ‘We have done those things which we ought not to have done;’ we might still be as fruitless as the barren fig-tree, and have reason to throw ourselves, in the deepest and most profound repentance, before His feet, and cry, ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.’ True fruit is positive service: something that pervades our life. Thus of the fruits of the Spirit, as described in Gal. v. 22,—‘Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,’—by far the greater number relate to our practical conduct amongst our fellow-men. In the account of heavenly wisdom given by St. James they are all of the same character: ‘The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.’ And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.’
True fruit again is something yielded up to God. When a missionary gives up home, and life itself for the Gospel, that is fruit. When the Sunday-school teacher devotes the day of rest to labour for God, that is fruit. When people bring freely of their substance, and throw large gifts into the treasury of God, that is fruit. When people in family life, heads of families, servants, young people, lay themselves out to make all happy around them, and by their loving, gentle conduct, commend the Gospel to all with whom they are brought in contact, that is fruit. It may not be the fruit of the hot-house, enjoyed only by the rich; or like some of those fruits which look so beautiful aloft on our orchard trees, that all admire: for we must remember that some of our best fruits grow in the cottage gardens, close to the ground. So God is often best glorified by the holy, humble, and self-denying zeal of the humble believer, keeping alow by the ground, and there, in humble life, ‘adorning the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.’
But you will observe in our Lord’s words, that it is not merely by fruit, but by much fruit, that God is glorified. All trees of the same kind are not equally fruitful, nor are all believers; thus it by no means follows that all believers glorify God, or that those who do so, do so equally. Our Lord Himself describes four degrees in His parable of the sower. First, there are those who are choked by the cares, and pleasures, and riches, of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. The plant is not altogether dead, and there may be a little fruit formed; but there is none ripened, nothing worth having, nothing that glorifies God. I fear there is a terrible number of those choked-up Christians in the Church of God. Then where there is real fruitfulness, there are different degrees. Some yield their thirty, some their sixty, and some their hundred-fold. How earnest ought we to be that every one may be what I may term, hundred-fold Christians,—people abounding in the fruits of the Spirit, spending and being spent for God!
And why not? The sacred privilege of glorifying God does not belong to some peculiar class of Christians,—to persons who have been suddenly lifted into what they term ‘the higher life,’—but to all those who are abiding in Christ Jesus, and have Him abiding in them; for He says, ‘He that abideth in Me, and I in him; the same bringeth forth much fruit.’ You may have reason therefore to be most deeply humbled under the conviction of indwelling sin, and to be most heartily grieved for the mixed thoughts and motives that have intruded themselves into the holiest acts of your whole lives; you may be utterly displeased with yourselves for the utter poverty of your best services; you may be so convinced of what you consider the peculiar difficulties of your own character, that you may think it quite impossible that you yourselves should ever rise to a high standard of Christian holiness: but there is a power in the Lord Jesus so to raise you above your difficulties that you may not only be saved, but actually raised to such a standard that, though you may not know it, you may bring glory to His name. Nothing could be more hopelessly dead than Aaron’s rod, but in one night it ‘budded and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded fruit.’ Nothing could be more hopeless than the case of David when he was in the horrible pit and the miry clay; but the Lord ‘set his feet on a rock and established his goings, and put a new song into his mouth, even praise unto his God,’ and the result was that God was glorified in his deliverance; for he adds, ‘Many shall see it and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.’ So you may say that you are dead, that you cannot rise, that there is no hope,—and there is no hope in your own efforts at self-quickening,—but He who raised the dead to life can so triumph even over your deadness as to bring out of your dead heart such an abundance of beautiful fruit, through the power of His own grace, that He Himself may be pleased with your loving and faithful service. Nay, more! Though you may never be able to see it, and though you may to the last be humbled to the dust for your shortcomings, He may still fulfil in you, and towards you, the prayer which St. Paul prayed for the Thessalonians: ‘That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you and ye in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.’
Aim then at the highest possible standard. Never settle down contented with anything that falls short of it. Never consider that your case is too difficult for the Lord, the Deliverer, but trust Him so to abide in you with power, that His own words may be fulfilled: ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.’
EXPOSITORY NOTES.
Note A.—Romans, vii.
I believe that a great deal of the difficulty felt respecting the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, arises from a mistaken idea that the different chapters are descriptive of consecutive periods of the Christian life. Persons are supposed to be justified in the fifth, brought to a new life in the sixth, and to be living in perfect peace in the eighth, and thus the conflict of the seventh is thought to be out of place. But surely there is no such consecutiveness to be found in the passage.
Both the sixth and seventh chapters are an answer to the question in the first verse of the sixth, ‘Shall we continue in sin?’ And this answer is founded on the principle that we must not do so, because such conduct would be inconsistent with the great change that has taken place in us. This change is then described under three figures.