The character of Christ’s people

“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” John 17:16

Suggested Further Reading: Leviticus 19:35-37

Look at Jesus’ character; how different from every other man’s—pure, perfect, spotless, even such should be the life of the believer. I plead not for the possibility of sinless conduct in Christians, but I must hold that grace makes men to differ, and that God’s people will be very different from other kinds of people. A servant of God will be God’s man everywhere. As a chemist, he could not indulge in any tricks that such men might play with their drugs; as a grocer—if indeed it be not a phantom that such things are done—he could not mix aloe leaves with tea or red lead in the pepper; if he practised any other kind of business, he could not for a moment condescend to the little petty shifts, called “methods of business.” To him it is nothing what is called “business;” it is what is called God’s law, he feels that he is not of the world, consequently, he goes against its fashions and its maxims. A singular story is told of a certain Quaker. One day he was bathing in the Thames, and a waterman called out to him, “Ha! there goes the Quaker.” “How do you know I’m a Quaker?” “Because you swim against the stream; it is the way the Quakers always do.” That is the way Christians always ought to do—to swim against the stream. The Lord’s people should not go along with the rest in their worldliness. Their characters should be visibly different. You should be such men that your fellows can recognise you without any difficulty, and say, “Such a man is a Christian.”

For meditation: When the Christian thinks to himself “But everybody else does it”, he is thinking of denying Christ (Ephesians 4:17,20).

Sermon no. 78
24 November (Preached 22 November 1855)