“Wherever the gospel goes, it produces Christian character, and develops it.”

(Colossians 1:6) (Phillips Version)

Pearl Buck remembers from her childhood spent in China an English family, who in spite of their long residence in a foreign land, remained always typically English. The father of the family, who had come out of China to work for the English Bible Society, always wore rough tweeds, a brown beard, and was as English as if he had never left his native land. The family lived on the banks of the Yangtze River in a typically English house set in the midst of a typically English garden; and Pearl Buck remembered sitting in the dining room of that thoroughly English house, stuffed with ugly English furniture, to sip strong, black English tea. There in far away Cathay was a little bit of England, immediately to be recognized for what it was.

St. Paul, writing to the church at Colossae, said that everywhere one might go in the Mediterranean world where the gospel had penetrated before him, one found something he readily recognized — namely: Christian Character.  “Wherever that Gospel goes,” wrote Paul, “it produces Christian character.”

Stephen Neill told of going some years ago to a remote section of India in the company of some Christian evangelists intending to preach to people there. They arrived at the village in the early morning. The women were coming out to draw water at the well. Looking at those women he had never seen before, Stephen Neill said to his companions, “I’m sure there are Christians in this village.” Upon inquiry they found this was so. And Bishop Neill said: “It was a small, isolated group of very simple, even ignorant people, and yet there was something about them that made them different from their neighbors.” What was that difference?

During the Second World War many an American in the uniform of his country shot down from the air, or washed up from the sea, on some distant Pacific island was struck with the same discovery that Bishop Neill made. Among strange, primitive peoples whose language and customs they could not understand, they found something they recognized as comfortably familiar — a reality they had known since childhood — namely: Christian Character. There it was, wherever they journeyed, for the gospel had gone there ahead of them and produced Christian character.

But what is there distinctive about Christian character? What is there about the Christian distinguishing him from his pagan neighbors? The Galatians epistle of Paul sums up what he believed to be that distinctiveness: “The fruits of the Holy Spirit are: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.”

“Wherever you find these qualities of personality,” Paul is saying, “you will know you have run into a Christian character.” These are the hallmarks of Christian character. At many another place in his correspondence Paul puts it bluntly that the Christian character reveals itself as a personality likeness to Jesus Christ. Now and again it would seem that Christ was living in this or that woman by faith. The mind and spirit and love of Christ seemed to be directing this life or that, and one could not help noticing that here was a Christ-like character. Tis’ the mark of the Christ, his “stigmata,” which is the recognizable difference between Christian character and any other.

But some of us, I fear, may find ourselves honestly on the opposite side of the fence from St. Paul on this assertion of his. We may sourly respond that what has impressed us most as we have gone up and down in the world and in the church, and observed people and noticed Christians, has been their lack of distinctiveness of Christian character — their failure to give noticeable evidence of maturing in Christian grace.

Surely, we who are parsons, have no illusion about the power of our preaching in producing Christian character. In one of Mark Rutherford’s novels a man strikes out angrily at a regular church-goer, saying: “Why, he is a contemptible cur; and yet it is not his fault. He has heard sermons about all sorts of supernatural subjects for thirty years, and no one has even warned him against meanness.”

And longevity of discipleship and regularity of church attendance do not seem to be able to produce invariably excellent Christian character.  In the weekly bulletin of a Presbyterian church there appeared a prayer which contained these petitions: “Lord, thou knowest better than I myself that I am growing older, and will some day be old…Seal my lips from a recital of my aches and pains.  They are increasing, and my love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. . Keep me reasonably sweet, I pray. I want to have a few friends down to the last.  I don’t want to be a saint — some of them are so hard to live with — but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil.  Amen.”

Why would such a prayer be printed in a Presbyterian Church bulletin for Christian characters to read? And why should all of us feel an aching need of voicing such a prayer to express our spiritual condition — if there were any reality about this business of distinctiveness of Christian character?

Well, we are dismayed, are we not, at the imperfections we find in our Christian brothers and sisters; and we are discouraged about our own failures to develop Christian character.

All of which brings us to ask what is the process by which Christian character is developed? Any why does the whole operation so often break down? One answer to this question in some books on the Christian life is this: “Pray more and try harder.” But the correct answer for many of us may be: “Stop trying on your own account and let God act.”

St. Paul in our text says: “Wherever the gospel goes, it produces Christian character.” What is the Gospel?  The Gospel is the good new of what God has done, not the good news of what people have done. The gospel does not urge people to achieve something. Here is the gospel: “God has acted in history for every person’s salvation. Christ has come. Lived. Died. Risen again. He reigns in triumph forever. A new way of life has been opened for all people everywhere to live at peace with God through Christ and receive daily the power, the love, the peace and forgiveness of God. Come, accept the gracious goodness of God freely.”  That is the gospel, the good news. That is what St. Paul said produces the Christian character everywhere it goes in the world.

How does one take on this gospel which can produce Christian character? Just humbly and gratefully receive it. Some folks want to make it appear that man’s goodness is in his belief, his faith. Just screw up your credulity to the point of believing the unbelievable: the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, the doctrine of the Trinity, and then this will be the gift God bestows for such credulity. Rather, you will find the invitation to receive the gospel by looking upon the face of Jesus Christ, his life, his teachings, his humility, his sacrifice, his love, and say: “I’ll risk my life to this spirit, this way of living in the world. I’ll allow this spirit, whatever it was which animated Jesus, call it what one may, to have a place in my life; yes, even the supreme and ascendant place. I’ll let the Christ Spirit take over in my heart. It won’t be easy, I know. It won’t be a once for all operation either. There will always be many voices calling me; and many forces pulling me in other directions, but I will try. I’ll come back to his word in the scripture daily. I’ll seek his face in prayer. I’ll keep the companionship of others who love and serve him.”

Stephen Neill says the one indispensable thing which one can do, and must do, in the quest for Christian character, is to try not to resist the Holy Sprit. It is God’s Holy Spirit which produces as its natural fruit the Christian graces of love and joy and peace and steadfastness and longsuffering. We do not do it for ourselves. What we are loathe to admit is that there is an enemy within the gates of our own personalities which says “Yes” to the Enemy without when we should say “No”. We are not strong enough to over power that enemy within. Only God’s Holy Spirit can conquer that enemy within and bind him. So it belongs to the nature of the power and the strength of the Holy Spirit to change our mortal natures to make them conform to the fullness of the stature of Christ.

Do we grow discouraged over the long history of our failures and mistakes? Does it seem that we are hopelessly held down to defeat by the bad blood of our heredity — our genes? I have a friend who cultivates an absorbing interest in genealogies. He recently sent me a copy of one possible pedigree which traces my ancestry back to Charlemagne. Just think of it! I’m only 42 generations from the Emperor Charlemagne! And for 25 to 30 generations there is nothing but royalty in that family tree! But the latter generations are rather filled with common stock. It must be this last low-level heredity which blots out or blights the royal in my soul and corrupts my character!

But, on the other hand, can it be that my great problem is not my heredity, but my environment — that my quest for character is hindered by the unfavorable set of circumstances that close in about me? Does it ever seem to you that no one has quite so many difficulties — obvious, concrete unfortunate events and trying personalities hemmed all about to thwart your progress toward perfection in Christian character? Is it our environment which is our biggest problem in the development of Christian character?

Once in a private airplane my two companions and I were trying to make an important appointment. The clouds, great, dark thunderheads, were rolling up in front of us. Our experienced pilot told us the danger if we tried to fly through those boiling mists, so he tried to climb above them. But the clouds were rising faster than our over-loaded plane could climb. Then he tried to find a way around them, but they were stretched for miles and miles. Yet our pilot did not give up. He persisted, poking the nose of the tiny plane round this formation and then that, until he found a rift, and a patch of blue beyond, and scooted safely through.

So also, for us, in the conduct of our lives, when the clouds of gloom and adversity gather, what to do? Curse the circumstances? Find fault with our companions? Pray for other situations and wonder why we weren’t born in another’s skin? Oh, No! Keep the faith. Never stop trying, watching, believing that “in the nick of time” God’s grace will open up a way for us, and that even the gloom, the cloud, the icy wind are a part of God’s wisdom in perfecting our character after the pattern of Christ.

The only time we have to serve God is in our day-by-day routine – humdrum as it may at times seem.  The only place we have to glorify Him is the unglorious place He has put us today. The only way we can show Him our love and faithfulness is in the set of these circumstances and with these people He has put about us, however trying and provoking they may be. But as we are faithful here and now with those God has given us, He will cause character to grow, slowly, imperceptibly, grandly, after the incomparable likeness of Christ.