799 this fact that Paul evidently had in mind when he said, “When it pleased God— to reveal His Son in me” (Gal. 1:15-16) and it behooves those of us who are called by the name of Chris tians to examine ourselves and see if we are Christ revealers. It is a poor rule that will not work both ways and if we are not Christ revealers (exhib itors of the fruit of the Spirit, (Gal. 5: 22-23) we have a real right to question whether or not Christ be in us. But Christ is in us except we be reprobates, (2 Cor. 13:5) and we certainly are not willing to call ourselves reprobates. The thing for us to do then is to rec ognize that Christ is in us and let Him produce fruit. A great many Christian workers teach that fruit bearing refers only to winning of souls. They are partly right and partly wrong. The real fruit of the Spirit is named in Gal. 5:22-23. Soul winning is not a fruit of the Spirit, but a by-product. (In many factories the by-product is of more profit than the product itself.) Soul winning will be the outgrowth of the fruit of the spirit. As the world sees Christ in us through the fruit of the Spirit they will be drawn to us and to Christ. (Matt. 5:16). This is what we call soul winning by the life. It is the surest and most prolific kind. Our life can tell for Christ every minute of the day. We can speak for Him with our lips only occasionally. A telephone opera tor was before the session of the church. When asked why that was the church of her choice she replied, that Dr. Wil son belonged there; that his house was on her exchange board at night and that whenever she called him at mid night, or at two, three or four o’clock in the morning his reply had always been a cheery “Yes, I will be there as soon as I can dress,” instead of a grouchy “What do you want?” She wanted to be as pleasant in her every day life as Dr. Wilson was. She realized her need of his Christ. Dr. Wilson’s
THE K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S has three values—beauty, MY food and seed containing. GlIRIiS We keep fruit on the center table partly because of its beauty. In selecting it at the fruit stand we buy that which has the high est color and looks the best. The lesson today might be divided into two sections. The verses in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew deal ing with seed, and the verses in the fifth chapter dealing with fruit. Christ is the seed. The fruit is the evidence of his having been planted within the heart. The seeming difficult is that to one He gave five talents, to another two, to another one, while the Bible teaches that God is no respecter of per sons and Christ wants to be the same to and in every believer. This difficulty however, disappears upon closer study when we find in the following verses that the five talents gained no more in proportion than did the two talents. The fault with the one talent man was that he did not allow his talent to express itself or multiply. If we could substitute some man’s name after every blessing in Matt. 5: 1-12; for instance, “Blessed is John Jones who is poor in spirit for his is the kingdom of heaven,” I am sure it would needs be a man in whom Christ Jesus the seed had been planted. It may be only a coincidence and it may be deeply significant that Gal. 5:22-23 gives a nine-fold fruit of the Spirit and that these verses in the fifth chapter of Matthew mention nine “blessings.” See how nearly the girls can match each blessing with one evidence of the presence of the Spirit according to the statement in Gal. 5:22-23. We select seed from the largest and best of the fruit. In fact we know the seed largely by the fruit which it has produced. This is as true in the spirit ual realm as it is in the physical, and in making that statement we practically say that Christ is largely known by the fruit He produces in Christians. It was
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