1 Timothy 6:12

1 Timothy 6:12

Man's Great Duty.

I. Consider our need of eternal life. Sin has brought death into this world; and we are all of us involved in the calamity and buried in the ruins of the fall. We may not have sinned as others have done: that is very possible. But though we have sinned less than others, we cannot be saved by merit; even as, thank God, though we have sinned more than others we may be saved by mercy. Those who speak of great and little, of few and many sins, seem to forget that man's ruin was the work of one moment and of one sin. The weight of only one sin sank this great world into perdition; and now all of us, all men, lie under the same sentence of condemnation. Extinguishing every hope of salvation through works, and sounding as ominous of evil in men's ears as the cracking of ice beneath our feet, or the roar of an avalanche, or the grating of a keel on the sunken reef, or the hammer that wakens the felon from dreams of life and liberty, that sentence is this: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them."

II. Consider what we have to do to obtain eternal life. Nothing in one sense more difficult, yet in another, easier a wish, a word, a look, and it is ours. You have only to wish, and, as if struck by a magician's rod, the walls of your prison-house open. You are free.

III. Consider more particularly what we have to do to obtain eternal life. By the aid of the Spirit, and through the exercise of faith, you are to-lay hold on the Saviour; and laying hold on Him, though it were in the hour of the most imminent destruction, and in the very jaws of death, you lay hold of life of eternal life.

IV. Consider when we are to lay hold of eternal life. When, but now? Christ promises it today; not tomorrow. Accept it so long as it is in your offer; seize it so long as it is within your reach.

T. Guthrie, The Way to Life, p. 1.

References: 1 Timothy 6:12 . Homilist, 3rd series, vol. i., p. go; vol. ix., p. 45; Clerical Library: Outline Sermons for Children, p. 256; Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 295; G. W. Conder, Ibid., vol. vii., p. 280; H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xii., p. 184. 1 Timothy 6:14 , 1 Timothy 6:15 . F. W. Farrar, Ibid., vol. xxviii., p. 67. 1 Timothy 6:15 , 1 Timothy 6:16 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. x., p. 216. 1 Timothy 6:16 . H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 123; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 336; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 383.