Expositions of Holy Scripture

Part 1

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EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

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SECOND CORINTHIANS, GALATIANS, AND PHILIPPIANS

CHAPTERS I TO END

COLOSSIANS, THESSALONIANS, AND FIRST TIMOTHY

NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.

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SECOND CORINTHIANS

Chaps. VII to End

GALATIANS AND PHILIPPIANS

CONTENTS

II. CORINTHIANS

HOPE AND HOLINESS (2 Cor. vii. 1) 1

SORROW ACCORDING TO GOD (2 Cor. vii. 10) 8

GIVING AND ASKING (2 Cor. viii. 1-12) 20

RICH YET POOR (2 Cor. viii. 9) 27

WILLING AND NOT DOING (2 Cor. viii. 11) 36

ALL GRACE ABOUNDING (2 Cor. ix. 8) 42

GOD'S UNSPEAKABLE GIFT (2 Cor. ix. 15) 50

A MILITANT MESSAGE (2 Cor. x. 5 and 6, R.V.) 57

SIMPLICITY TOWARDS CHRIST (2 Cor. xi. 3) 65

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS (2 Cor. xii. 8, 9) 74

NOT YOURS BUT YOU (2 Cor. xii. 14) 83

GALATIANS

Part 2

FROM CENTRE TO CIRCUMFERENCE (Gal. ii. 20) 91

THE EVIL EYE AND THE CHARM (Gal. iii. 1) 100

LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE (Gal. iii. 4) 109

THE UNIVERSAL PRISON (Gal. iii. 22) 116

THE SON SENT (Gal. iv. 4, 5, R.V.) 126

WHAT MAKES A CHRISTIAN: CIRCUMCISION OR FAITH? (Gal. v. 6) 136

'WALK IN THE SPIRIT' (Gal. v. 16) 153

THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT (Gal. v. 22, 23) 162

BURDEN-BEARING (Gal. vi. 2-5) 171

DOING GOOD TO ALL (Gal. vi. 10) 180

THE OWNER'S BRAND (Gal. vi. 17) 189

PHILIPPIANS

LOVING GREETINGS (Phil. i. 1-8, R.V.) 200

A COMPREHENSIVE PRAYER (Phil. i. 9-11, R.V.) 206

A PRISONER'S TRIUMPH (Phil. i. 12-20, R.V.) 211

A STRAIT BETWIXT TWO (Phil. i. 21-25) 219

CITIZENS OF HEAVEN (Phil. i. 27, 28) 233

A PLEA FOR UNITY (Phil. ii. 1-4, R.V.) 244

THE DESCENT OF THE WORD (Phil. ii. 5-8, R.V.) 253

THE ASCENT OF JESUS (Phil. ii. 9-11, R.V.) 260

WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION (Phil. ii. 12, 13) 268

COPIES OF JESUS (Phil. ii. 14-16, R.V.) 281

A WILLING SACRIFICE (Phil. ii. 16-18, R.V.) 287

PAUL AND TIMOTHY (Phil. ii. 19-24, R.V.) 295

PAUL AND EPAPHRODITUS (Phil. ii. 25-30, R.V.) 305

PREPARING TO END (Phil. iii. 1-3, R.V.) 311

THE LOSS OF ALL (Phil. iii. 4-8, R.V.) 321

THE GAIN OF CHRIST (Phil. iii. 8, 9, R.V.) 328

Part 3

SAVING KNOWLEDGE (Phil. iii. 10, 11, R.V.) 336

LAID HOLD OF AND LAYING HOLD (Phil. iii. 12) 348

THE RACE AND THE GOAL (Phil. iii. 13, 14) 359

THE SOUL'S PERFECTION (Phil. iii. 15) 369

THE RULE OF THE ROAD (Phil. iii. 16) 381

WARNINGS AND HOPES (Phil. iii. 17-21, R.V.) 391

II. CORINTHIANS

HOPE AND HOLINESS

Having therefore these promises . . . let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.'--2 COR. vii. 1.

It is often made a charge against professing Christians that their religion has very little to do with common morality. The taunt has sharpened multitudes of gibes and been echoed in all sorts of tones: it is very often too true and perfectly just, but if ever it is, let it be distinctly understood that it is not so because of Christian men's religion but in spite of it. Their bitterest enemy does not condemn them half so emphatically as their own religion does: the sharpest censure of others is not so sharp as the rebukes of the New Testament. If there is one thing which it insists upon more than another, it is that religion without morality is nothing--that the one test to which, after all, every man must submit is, what sort of character has he and how has he behaved--is he pure or foul? All high-flown pretension, all fervid emotion has at last to face the question which little children ask, 'Was he a good man?'

The Apostle has been speaking about very high and mystical truths, about all Christians being the temple of God, about God dwelling in men, about men and women being His sons and daughters; these are the very truths on which so often fervid imaginations have built up a mystical piety that had little to do with the common rules of right and wrong. But Paul keeps true to the intensely practical purpose of his preaching and brings his heroes down to the prosaic earth with the homely common sense of this far-reaching exhortation, which he gives as the fitting conclusion for such celestial visions.

I. A Christian life should be a life of constant self-purifying.

This epistle is addressed to the church of God which is at Corinth with all the saints which are in all Achaia.

Looking out over that wide region, Paul saw scattered over godless masses a little dispersed company to each of whom the sacred name of Saint applied. They had been deeply stained with the vices of their age and place, and after a black list of criminals he had had to say to them 'such were some of you,' and he lays his finger on the miracle that had changed them and hesitates not to say of them all, 'But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.'

The first thing, then, that every Christian has is a cleansing which accompanies forgiveness, and however his garment may have been 'spotted by the flesh,' it is 'washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.' Strange cleansing by which black stains melt out of garments plunged in red blood! With the cleansing of forgiveness and justification comes, wherever they come, the gift of the Holy Spirit--a new life springing up within the old life, and untouched by any contact with its evils. These gifts belong universally to the initial stage of the Christian life and require for their possession only the receptiveness of faith. They admit of no co-operation of human effort, and to possess them men have only to 'take the things that are freely given to them of God.' But of the subsequent stages of the Christian life, the laborious and constant effort to develop and apply that free gift is as essential as, in the earliest stage, it is worse than useless. The gift received has to be wrought into the very substance of the soul, and to be wrought out in all the endless varieties of life and conduct. Christians are cleansed to begin with, but they have still daily to cleanse themselves: the leaven is hid in the three measures of meal, but ''tis a life-long task till the lump be leavened,' and no man, even though he has the life that was in Jesus within him, will grow up 'into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' unless, by patient and persistent effort, he is ever pressing on to 'the things that are before' and daily striving to draw nearer to the prize of his high calling. We are cleansed, but we have still to cleanse ourselves.

Yet another paradox attaches to the Christian life, inasmuch as God cleanses us, but we have to cleanse ourselves. The great truth that the spirit of God in a man is the fontal source of all his goodness, and that Christ's righteousness is given to us, is no pillow on which to rest an idle head, but should rather be a trumpet-call to effort which is thereby made certain of success. If we were left to the task of self-purifying by our own efforts we might well fling it up as impossible. It is as easy for a man to lift himself from the ground by gripping his own shoulders as it is for us to rise to greater heights of moral conduct by our own efforts; but if we can believe that God gives the impulse after purity, and the vision of what purity is, and imparts the power of attaining it, strengthening at once our dim sight and stirring our feeble desires and energising our crippled limbs, then we can 'run with patience the race that is set before us.'

We must note the thoroughness of the cleansing which the Apostle here enjoins. What is to be got rid of is not this or that defect or vice, but 'all filthiness of flesh and spirit.' The former, of course, refers primarily to sins of impurity which in the eyes of the Greeks of Corinth were scarcely sins at all, and the latter to a state of mind when fancy, imagination, and memory were enlisted in the service of evil. Both are rampant in our day as they were in Corinth. Much modern literature and the new gospel of 'Art for Art's sake' minister to both, and every man carries in himself inclinations to either. It is no partial cleansing with which Paul would have us to be satisfied: 'all' filthiness is to be cast out. Like careful housewives who are never content to cease their scrubbing while a speck remains upon furniture, Christian men are to regard their work as unfinished as long as the least trace of the unclean thing remains in their flesh or in their spirit. The ideal may be far from being realised at any moment, but it is at the peril of the whole sincerity and peacefulness of their lives if they, in the smallest degree, lower the perfection of their ideal in deference to the imperfection of their realisation of it.

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