outlines and suggestive comments.
I. Christians are a blessing to the world. 1. There is the influence of personal character, showing what religion is, viz., a living principle in the hearts of the faithful, which must spread its radiance. It may be said of a good man, as it was said of Christ, “He could not be hid” (Mark vii. 24). 2. There is a force of the great principles they advocate—Freedom, Education, etc. They raise, in this way, the standard of public opinion. 3. There are their habits of active beneficence. II. To win souls the highest wisdom is requisite. 1. Consider the preciousness of the object—souls. Made in the image of God, and designed to reflect His glory. Of infinite value in the esteem of Him who came to redeem them. 2. How greatly they are endangered by sin, held captive by Satan, in bondage by the world, entrenched in long habits of evil. The soul, in its present depraved state, is not inclined to seek God, nor anxious to obtain deliverance. 3. The difficulty is increased by the shortness of the time and the limitation of the means at our command. The preacher has only the Sabbath; Satan and the world have all the week wherein to exert their influence. It is more or less so with all who endeavour to win souls.—S. Thodey.
He may begin as a “leaf” or “branch” (verse 28), but he ends as a “tree.” The tree of life made the partaker of it immortal. “The fruit of the righteous” is immortal life to many a poor sinner. The latter clause may read either: “The wise is a winner of souls,” or “The winner of souls is wise.” It doubtless should be read in both. The grand “tree of life” on earth is the man converted already. The man converted already will be a “tree of life.” Both doctrines are true, and, therefore, in so terse a passage, I see no resource but to understand the Hebrew as pregnant of both. It is of the very essence of wisdom to be benevolent, and it is the very height of benevolence to catch the souls of the impenitent. Moreover, no soul is caught but by the wise.—Miller.
What is dealt on is the power of wisdom, as we say, to win the hearts of men. He that is wise draws men to himself, just as the fruit of the righteous is to all around him a tree of life, bearing new fruits of healing evermore. It is to be noted, also, that the phrase here rendered “winneth souls,” is the same as that which is elsewhere translated by “taketh the life” (1 Kings xix. 4; Psa. xxxi. 13). The wise man is the true conqueror.—Plumptre.
To win souls is one special fruit of the tree of life. This is a noble fruit indeed, since our soul is more worth than a world, as He hath told us who only went to the price of it (Matt. xvi. 26).—Trapp.
In this verse we have set forth to us the excellency of a righteous man. I. He is more useful than others. He is not a barren tree, but a fruitful bough, as Joseph was. And he doth not bring forth fruit unto himself. As the tree of life would give life to them that would eat thereof, so those that will hearken to the counsel of the righteous shall partake with him of eternal life. II. He is more skilful than others. He wins souls—1. By Scripture demonstration. Thou canst never throw down the devil’s strongholds except by God’s own weapons. 2. By earnest supplications. As the prophet did pray life into the dead child, so thou shouldst strive in prayer for dead souls. 3. By kind obligation. Labour by kindness and courtesy to gain upon all thou dost converse with, that thou mayst get within him, that thou mayst be in a capacity to do good to his soul. 4. By faithful reprehension. ’Tis quite contrary to Christian love to let sin lie upon thy brother (Lev. xix. 17). Show your love to souls by the faithful rebuking of sin, not as a token of your displeasure, but as an ordinance of God. 5. By convincing conversation. Live before all thou dost converse with in the convincing power of a holy life. 6. By careful observation of all those advantages that God puts into your hand. Take advantage of his affliction. Make use of thy near relation or of his dependence upon thee, or of thy interest in him. It may be he is concerned in thy goodwill to him, or hath some affection for thee. Make use of it for God.—Alleine.
main homiletics of verse 31.
The Recompense of the Righteous and the Wicked.
I. The righteous man will receive a present chastisement for his sins—1. Because of his near relation to God. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos iii. 2). Is this a strange principle of action? Is it not one which is, or ought to be, acted upon among men? If the son of a king commits a crime, is it not felt that his high position and his special privileges make him more deserving of punishment? Our Lord recognised this truth when He said “To whom men have committed much of him they will ask the more” (Luke xii. 48). Those who stand in special relation to God are expected to show it by a holy life, and when they fall into sin greater dishonour is brought upon the name of God than by many sins of the ungodly. Hence the necessity for their chastisement. 2. Because he will not be punished in the next world. The whole tenor of Bible teaching recognises this truth, and Paul asserts it: “We are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. xi. 32). 3. To overthrow that doctrine of devils—“Let us sin that grace may abound” (Rom. vi. 1, 15). Many false doctrines have gone abroad in the so-called church, but surely none is so manifestly from the devil as this which proclaims that the more a child of God sins the more God is glorified! Will the man whose wound has been closed and whose bleeding has been stanched by the surgeon, tear off the bandage and reopen the wound in order to afford the physician another opportunity of displaying his skill? May he not, by such an act, be guilty of suicide? May he not so incur the anger of his doctor as to make him refuse to re-dress the wound? If any man thinks that the abounding mercy of God is a licence for sin, let him read the history of David, and ask himself if it does not prove that he is wofully mistaken. David himself most certainly was, if he presumed upon his high standing with the God whose “gentleness had made him great” (Psa. xviii. 35) when he sinned the great sin which was the curse of all his after life. The God whom men fancy will be thus indulgent is not the God of the Bible—the God of Sinai—the God who visited the sin even of His servant Moses. “Let us sin that grace may abound” came from the forger of the oldest lie in human history. Mount Hor, Mount Nebo, and Mount Zion, each of which was the scene of a penalty inflicted on a distinguished saint of God for a particular and specified sin, bear witness to the truth that the “righteous will be recompensed on the earth.” And of these instances that of Moses is, perhaps the most striking. Here is the chastisement of the greatest man in the Old Testament dispensation—the specially elected leader and lawgiver of the chosen people. And though he had been and still was—yea, because he was the most honoured of Old Testament saints, he was shut out of the land to which he had been journeying for forty years for assuming a Divine prerogative—“die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered to thy people, as Aaron thy brother died at Mount Hor, and was gathered to his people: because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Maribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel” (Deut. xxxii. 50, 51). Such a sentence testifies that God is a consuming fire to sin, in the righteous as well as in the wicked.
II. If God’s friends are chastised, His enemies must be.—For they not only sin but make light of sin, either by denying the fact or blaming their circumstances, their temperament, or their tempters, laying the blame anywhere except upon themselves, and this increases their guilt. If those who acknowledge and confess their sin must yet be chastised for it, how much more those who refuse to do either! The sin of the righteous is the exception of his life, but the entire life of the ungodly man is a course of opposition to the law of God. If, therefore, the isolated instances are visited, how much more such an accumulation of moral debt! The very justice of God demands that if He punish the saint He shall also punish the sinner. This is New Testament teaching as well as Old. “For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God; and if it first begin at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel of God?” (1 Pet. iv. 17).