Wherefore we labour, that … we may be accepted of Him.
Labouring for acceptance
I. What we are to understand by the text.
1. The apostle did not mean that he “laboured”--
(1) To make any atonement for his sins. That had been high treason against the sovereign authority of Him who “by one offering hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified.”
(2) To add to the righteousness of Christ; for if he and all the saints of God had attempted to add to it, it had been to defile it.
(3) To be more a child of God than he was; for he had taught that “we are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” Labour is lost here.
2. Then in what sense did he “labour”? All things that are spiritual are acceptable to God. He loves a spiritual mind; it is the reflection of Himself. Observe, there is a regular climax, an ascending gradation of expression, in these three passages (Rom_12:1-2; 1Th_4:1-18.; Col_1:9-10). God loves high and holy service, the obedient spirit and the quiet heart, those who “follow on to know Him.” The apostle did desire these things, and “laboured” for their attainment. Oh! with what deep self-renunciation did he labour! (1Co_15:10.)
II. Who it is that gives this remarkable declaration. Was he a whir behind the very chiefest of the apostles? The Lord signally owned him. But did his apostleship, his ministry, satisfy him? This is what he says, “Wherefore we labour,” etc. The apostle had been “caught up into the third heaven”; he had heard things which “it was not lawful for him to utter.” Was he satisfied with revelations? He counted them all as nothing, compared with this object of his soul’s desire. Paul was a man of no small attainment either, yet he said, “We labour.”
III. The remarkable expression he connects with it. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” No one could ever say these words that had not both his feet standing firmly upon the atonement. Conclusion: There is not one but is “labouring” for something. It may be but the floating bubble in the water. Is it pleasure? friends? intellectual attainment? the grosser or the purer walks of life?--but still without God? Oh! solemn thought I If we saw a man with his house on fire, labouring to save his goods, and then we saw him burning with his goods, no one could look without shuddering at the sight. And yet we see thousands of sinners doing it all around us. (J. H. Evans, M. A.)
The great ambition of a true Christian
I. We must not only do things which are acceptable to God for the matter, but this must be our fixed end and scope.
1. We cannot be sincere unless this is the case. One main difference between the sincere and the hypocrite is in the end and scope. The one seeketh the approbation of men, and the other the approbation of God (2Co_1:12).
2. This makes us serious and watchful, and to keep close to our duty--the fitness of means is judged of by the end. Let a man fix upon a right end, and he will soon understand his way, and will address himself to such means as are fitted to that end, and make straight towards it without any wanderings.
(1) Consider how many impertinencies are cut off if I be true to my end and great scope; e.g., when I remember that my business is to be accepted of God at the last, can I spend my time in ease and idleness, or carnal vanities and recreations? (Ecc_2:2.)
(2) It will cut off all inconsistencies with our great end (Gen_39:9).
3. This gives us comfort under the difficulties of obedience, and the hardships of our pilgrimage. The end sweetens the means. Now, what greater encouragement can there be than to think how God will welcome us with a “Well done”? (Mat_25:21; Mat_25:23.)
II. This must be our work as well as our scope; and this design must be carried on with the greatest seriousness, as our great care and business. “We labour.” There is a double notion of great use in the spiritual life: making religion our business, and making religion our recreation. It must be our business in opposition to slightness; it must be our recreation in opposition to wearisomeness. The word in the text hath a special signification. We should with no less earnestness endeavour to please God than they that contend for honour in the world; we should make it our constant employment that God may like us for the present and take us home to Him at length into His blessed presence. What is all the world to this?
III. We must not only take care that we be accepted of God at last, when we go out of the body, but we must strive to be accepted of Him now.
1. How else can we long for the coming of Christ, if before we pass to our judgment we know not whether we shall be accepted, yea or no?
2. Else we cannot comfortably enjoy communion with God for the present. How can we come before Him if we know not whether He will accept an offering at our hands?
3. We cannot have a cheerful fruition of the creature and worldly enjoyments till God accepteth us (Ecc_9:7). Till we are in a reconciled estate, all our comforts are but as stolen waters, and bread eaten in secret, like Damocles’ banquet, while a sharp sword hung over his head by a slender thread.
4. That which maketh us more lively and active in our course of pleasing God is--
(1) The future judgment (2Co_5:10). Whom should we please, and with whom should we seek to be accepted? A vain world, or frail man, or the God to whom we must strictly give an account?
(2) The hope of our presence with Him, and the beatifical vision and fruition of Him; for in the context he speaketh of presence and sight, and then he saith, “Wherefore we labour.” Conclusion:
1. Some reasons of the point.
(1) We were made and sent into the world for this end, that by a constant course of obedience we might approve ourselves to God, and finally be accepted of Him, and received into His glory (Joh_6:38).
(2) We were redeemed to this end (Rev_5:9).
(3) Our entering into covenant with God implieth it.
(4) The relations which result from our covenant interest. There is the relation between us and Christ of husband and spouse (Hos_2:19). Now the duty of the wife is to please the husband (1Co_7:34). The relation of children and father (2Co_6:18). Now the duty of children is to please the parents. Masters and servants (Eze_16:8). They that please themselves carry themselves as if they were their own, not God’s.
2. Some study to please men.
(1) How can these comply with the great duty of Christians, which is to please the Lord? (Gal_1:10.)
(2) There is no such necessity of the approbation of men as of God. Please God, and no matter who is your enemy (Pro_16:9).
3. Is this your great scope and end?
(1) Your end will be known by your work.
(2) If this be your end, it will be known by your solace (2Co_1:12).
(3) If God’s glory be your scope, any condition will be tolerable to you, so as you may enjoy His favour. (T. Manton, D. D.)
Labour and motive
I. The sphere of labour to which these words refer. There can be nothing more prejudicial to a truly religious life than the supposition that there is any sphere into which we are not to carry our religion, and where the eye of the Master takes no cognizance of the deeds that are done. “Holiness unto the Lord must be written upon the bells of the horses.” We must give an account of all the things done in the body. Every province of our life belongs to the kingdom of Christ.
1. The servant or workman has another Master besides the human master that he serves, and all his secular work is done to Christ (Col_3:22). The workman then, as such, is a servant of Christ.
2. The master, too, has a Master as well as the workman, to whom he shall have to render an account of the deeds done in the body (Col_4:1).
3. This sphere of labour also embraces trade and commerce.
4. Kings and subjects, as such, are also to serve Christ.
5. Our sphere of labour also embraces all the relationships of life which we sustain, and the works of benevolence to which we are called. The love of parents for their children and of children for their parents is service rendered to God.
6. I need scarcely add that this sphere embraces what we are accustomed specially to call religious life and work. We are to labour in prayer and self-culture; to keep our hearts with all diligence and our bodies under subjection: this requires self-denial and toil. We are to strive daily to grow in grace.
II. The motive by which we are to re influenced and animated in our work, “that we may be accepted of Him.” It was this that stimulated the apostle’s heart and strengthened his hands and fired his zeal.
1. This will make our work pleasant. How much pleasanter the ordinary duties of life would become if we could feel that in doing them we serve Christ!
2. We shall also enjoy the presence and favour of Christ. The man who serves Christ in everything will find Christ in everything.
3. Service done from this motive will at length receive its full reward.
1. Let us learn, then, from this subject that religion enters into every department of human life. There is nothing secular in the sense that it is not also sacred.
2. How diligent and conscientious this should make us in the discharge of every duty! He sees us, He examines us, He rewards us. (A. Clark.)
Pleasing Christ
I. The supreme aim of the Christian life. To be “accepted,” “well-pleasing”; not merely that we may be accepted, but that we may bring a smile into Christ’s face, and some delight in us into His heart. Set that two-fold aim before you, else you will fail to experience the full stimulus of this thought.
1. Now such an aim implies a very wonderful conception of Christ’s present relations to us. We may minister to His joy. Just as really as you mothers are glad when you hear from a far-off land that your boy is doing well, so Christ’s heart fills with gladness when He sees you and me walking in the paths in which He would have us go. That we may please Him “who pleased not Himself,” is surely the grandest motive on which the pursuit of holiness and the imitation of Christ can ever be made to rest. Oh! how much more blessed such a motive is than all the lower reasons for which men are sometimes exhorted to be good! What a difference it is when we say, “Do that thing because it is right,” or “Do that thing because you will be happier if you do,” or when we say, “Do it because He would like you to do it.” Transmute obligation into gratitude, and in front of duty and appeals to self put Christ, and all the difficulty and burden of obedience become easy, and a joy.
2. This one supreme aim can be carried on through all life in every varying form, great or small. A blessed unity is given to our whole being when the little and the big, the easy and the hard things, are all brought under the influence of the one motive and made co-operant to the one end. Drive that one steadfast aim through your lives like a bar of iron, and it will give the lives strength and consistency, not rigidity, because they may still be flexible. Nothing will be too small to be consecrated by that motive; nothing too great to own its power. You can please Him everywhere and always. The only thing that is inconsistent is to sin against Him. If we bear with us this as a conscious motive in every part of our day’s work, it will give us a quick discernment as to what is evil which nothing else will so surely give.
II. The concentrated effort which this aim requires. The word rendered “labour” is very seldom employed in Scripture. It means literally, to be fond of honour, or to be actuated by a love of honour; and hence it comes, by a very natural transition, to mean, to strive to gain something for the sake of the honour connected with it. We ought, as Christians--
1. To cultivate this ambition. Men have all got the love of approbation deep in them. God put it there, not that we might shape our lives so as to get others to pat us on the back, and say, “Well done!” but that, in addition to the other solemn motives for righteousness, we might have this highest ambition to impel us on the road. That will take some cultivation. It is a great deal easier to shape our courses so as to get one another’s praise. A prime condition of all Christ-pleasing life is a wholesome disregard of what anybody says but Himself. The old Lacedaemonians used to stir themselves to heroism by the thought: “What will they say of us in Sparta?” The governor of some English colony minds very little what the people think about him. He reports to Downing Street, and it is the opinion of the Home Government that influences him. You report to headquarters. Never mind what anybody else thinks of you. Be deaf to the tittle-tattle of your fellow-soldiers in the ranks. It is your Commander’s smile that will be your highest reward.
2. To strive with the utmost energy in the accomplishment of it. Paul’s notion of acceptable service was service which a man suppressed much to render, and overcame much to bring. Look at his metaphors--a warfare, a race, a struggle, a building up of some great temple structure, and the like--all suggesting the idea of patient, persistent, continuous toil, and most of them suggesting also the idea of struggle with antagonistic forces and difficulties, either within or without. So we must set our shoulders to the wheel, put our backs into our work. But then do not forget that deeper than all effort, and the very spring and life of it, there must be the opening of our hearts for the entrance of His life and spirit by the presence of which only are we well-pleasing to Christ. According to the old illustration, the refiner sat by the furnace until he could see in the molten metal his own face mirrored, and then he knew it was pure. So what pleases Christ in us is the reflection of Himself. And how can we get that except by receiving into our hearts the Spirit that was in Christ Jesus, that will dwell in us, and will produce in us in our measure the same image that it formed in Him? “Work out your own salvation,” because “it is God that worketh in you.”
III. The utter insignificance to which this aim reduces all externals.
1. What differences of condition are covered by that parenthetical phrase--“present or absent!” He talks about it as if it was a very small matter. If the difference between life and death is dwarfed, what else do you suppose will remain? Whether we be rich or poor, solitary or beset by friends, young or old, it matters not. The one aim lifts itself before us, and they in whose eyes shine the light of that great issue are careless of the road along which they pass.
2. Then remember that this same aim and this same result may be equally pursued and attained whether here or yonder. On earth, in death, through eternity, such a life will be homogeneous, and of a piece; and when all other aims are forgotten and out of sight, then still this will be the purpose, and yonder it will be the accomplished purpose of each, to please the Lord Jesus Christ. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
