Strength Comes With Use

In moral and spiritual things the need for proper exercise is even greater. A mere knowledge of right only brings added condemnation if it is not rightly used. Moral truths need to be expressed in action, coming to life and developing through deeds and words. Spiritual truths need all this with an added exercise of contemplation and integration which
may end by making them more real in the make-up of a man than his physical frame.

The Lord Jesus offended the Jews of his day by saying that a man was defiled not by the physical food which builds up his body but by the thoughts which come from the heart. There are many different foods for our physical frames, and so long as they are adequate for the renovation of flesh and blood it matters little what we choose. A few microscopical specks of dirt such as might come from unwashed hands cause no defilement. Even on the physical plane there are worse things which we do not see and which we cannot possibly avoid.

Surely we can all see the force of the distinction drawn by the Lord. If we admire and love a man, it is not for the excellence of his physical frame or the beauty of his countenance. It is true that the face often reveals something of that which is within, but it only acts as the index of something more important than flesh and blood. If we feel that a man is a defiling influence, it has nothing to do with his flesh and bone, or the kind of food out of which his substance has been built. It has to do with character, and the kind of mental food by which that has been nourished. We are led to the conclusion that this unseen mental and moral growth is in a sense more real, and certainly is far more important, than the growth of the body. A man may be full of the spirit and essence of art or poetry; he may be the embodiment of revolutionary thought and political reform; or he may be so fully imbued with the thoughts of a teacher that his mentor seems to live again in him. Just occasionally we meet one who perhaps with rough appearance and little of superficial culture, thrills us with the conviction that Christ is in him. This ideal should be the aim of all disciples, as it was the subject of the Lord's repeated exhortation and prayer.