p. 6 | TO THYSELF by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 50.

"TO THYSELF."

By Editor

THE apostle Paul exhorts, "Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God." Rom. 14:22. He has before given a reason for this personal application: "For we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. . . . Every one of us shall give account OF HIMSELF to God." Verses 10-12.

He tells us again that "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men." Verses 17, 18.

Now the lesson is twofold. Let us make it personal: (1) We are not to judge our brother; we are not to force him to our terms; "for who art thou that judgest another man's servant?" We and he together must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, and there each must give an account of himself. (2) Our faith must be personal, to ourselves.

The things which the apostle is here setting right do not occur as between a worldling and Christian, but between Christians themselves. We who judge our brother and wish to exercise faith for him rejoiced when he yielded his sin and gave his heart to the Lord. But there is something that the brother still practises which does not quite suit us. He may not quite meet our ideas of dress; he may not eat just as we do; his ideas of some scriptures may not be just like ours; and we unsparingly condemn him, forgetting that our self-assumed judgment may be a thousand times worse than his sin, of which perhaps the Lord has not yet convicted him. We hunt up those texts which condemn him. We quote them in our testimony in social or class meeting; and we wonder that after all our effort our words have so little or no effect.

Perhaps we are a husband, and our wife does not see things as we do in every respect, and we throw at her such texts as Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1, etc. We quote them in the morning and at night; but somehow they have no effect unless it be to make the matter worse. And we get to feeling that the brother is not Christian, the wife does not know the Lord.

What is the trouble? The brother may be doing wrong; the wife may not be acting right. We are sure of this. The trouble lies right here: God has not given us the sentence of judgment. We are endeavoring to act both the part of the Judge and the Spirit. We seek to condemn, and apply the correction; and we are only man, as full of imperfections as brother or wife.

Those scriptures which condemn our brother are for him to take home to his heart, to make by faith application of them to his daily life. The Spirit will do the work.

We are piling up condemnation against a door which opens outward, and battering away for admission of our ideas. Do we wonder the door will not open?

The texts we throw at our wife may be needed by her; but they are for the wife's faith not ours. Let her read them and let the Spirit of truth do its work.

But what shall we do?—Read the Word, and let our faith in it be to ourselves. If we are husbands, here is our text: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church." Eph. 5:25. "Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them." Col. 3:19. All husbands may study these scriptures with profit.

Let us be careful that neither brother nor wife stumble over our eating or drinking, our life or actions. "Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify [build up] another. . . . It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Hast thou faith? have it to THYSELF before God."