Evening Reflection
Encouragements To Meekness
By Matthew Henry - Edited by RPW. Sr.
Have we not reason to labor and endeavor, since there is such a virtue and such a praise, to attain these things? Should we not lay out ourselves to the utmost for this ornament of a meek and quiet spirit? For your direction in this endeavor, if you be indeed willing to be directed, I shall briefly lay before you some Scripture precepts concerning meekness; some patterns of it; some particular instances in which we have special need of it; some good principles that we should abide by; and some good practices that we should abound in, in order to our growth in this grace. In opening these things, we will endeavor to keep close to the law, and to the testimony. If we lay the word of God before us for our rule, and will be ruled by it, we shall find the command of God making meekness and quietness as much our duty as they are our ornament. We are there told, as the will of God that we must seek meekness.
Number two
"Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, meekness." It is one of the members of the new man, (a) which we must put on. Put it on as armor, to keep provocations from the heart, and so to defend the vitals. They that have tried it will say it is "armor of proof." When you are putting on "the whole armor of God," do not forget this. (b) Put it on as attire, as your necessary clothing, which you cannot go without; look upon yourselves as ungirt, undressed, unblessed without it. Put it on as a livery garment, by which you may be known to be the disciples of the meek and humble and patient Jesus, and to belong to that peaceable family. Put it on as an ornament, as a robe and a diadem, by which you may be both beautiful and dignified in the eyes of others. Put it on as the elect of God, holy and beloved, because you are so in profession; and that you may approve yourselves so in truth and reality, be clothed with meekness as the elect of God, a choice people, a chosen people, whom God has set apart for himself from the rest of the world, as holy, sanctified to God, sanctified by him: (c)study these graces, which put such a lustre upon holiness, and recommend it to those that are without, as beloved, beloved of God, beloved of man, beloved of your ministers: for love's sake, put on meekness. What winning, persuasive rhetoric is here! enough, one would think, to smooth the roughest soul, and to soften and sweeten the most obstinate heart. Meekness is a grace of the Spirit's working, a garment of his preparing; but we must put it on, that is, we must lay our souls under the commanding power and influence of it. Put it on, not as a loose outer garment, to be put off in hot weather, but let it cleave to us, as the girdle cleaves to a man's loins; so put it on as to reckon ourselves naked to our shame without it.
(a) 2 Corinthians 11:25; Ephesians 4;24
(b) Ephesians 6:10-12
(c) 1 Peter 2:9; Colossians 3:12
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