PHIL. i. 6. “Being con-
fident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good
work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

OUR text speaks of the strong confidence which Christain
people may cherish of continued progress and eternal
salvation. We ask, why did Paul think thus? By what
consideration may we justify and strengthen this holy
confidence?
I. God’s promise tells us that this is so.
This text should be taken as a direct promise of God.
Paul is himself in the strife, and he speaks to us as but one
of the many in the universal conflict of believing souls,
and he rings out this grand assurance of ultimate victory,
not for himself as a privileged person, but for the great and
for the weak alike.
II. God’s habits confirm this assurance.
He says, “My ways are not as your ways.” He has
ways of His own—high and holy ways which we may
know and see whether He keeps His promise. We take
all the regularities of nature as examples of the acts and
habits of God. We take them as strong and continual
confirmation of His constancy in the operations of that
higher world in which our souls now live through Jesus
Christ. All nature says, “He that hath begun a good
work in you will perform it.”
III. Christian experience confirms this assurance.
Christian people do persevere. It is a wonderful thing,
and a proof that God is working in them, that Christians
hold on their way amid temptations and the daily struggles
of life.
IV. Death is a witness to this same thing.
We might ask the king of terrors how often he has been
vanquished even by the weakest souls, and how often he
has fled away from the death-bed, because it was becoming
a life-bed, rising into a house of God, shining like the gate
of heaven, and if we had his answers truly, they would
mightily confirm the truth of our text, that He who hath
begun a good work in the souls of men, will perform it
until the day of Jesus Christ.
Alexander Raleigh, D.D.