Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

¹⁵ So then, my Brethren, if I should wish to reprove any of you individually in secret, perhaps he would listen to me. I reprove many of you now in public; all praise me; may some give attentive heed to me! I have no love for him who praises me with his voice, and with his heart despises me. For when you praise, and not reform yourself, you are a witness against yourself. If you are evil, and you are pleased with what I say, be displeased with yourself; because if you are displeased with yourself as being evil, when you reform, you will be well pleased with yourself, which if I mistake not I said the day before yesterday.

In all my words I set a mirror before you. Nor are they my words, but I speak at the bidding of the Lord, by whose terrors I refrain from keeping silence. For who would not rather choose to keep silence, and not to give account for you? But now I have undertaken the burden, and I cannot, and I ought not to shake it off my shoulders. When the Epistle to the Hebrews was being read, my Brethren, you heard, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves; for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief; for that is unprofitable for you.” When do we it with joy?

When we see man making progress in the words of God. When does the labourer in the field work with joy? When he looks at the tree, and sees the fruit; when he looks at the crop, and sees the prospect of abundance of grain in the floor; when he sees that he has not laboured in vain, has not bowed his back, and bruised his hands, and endured the cold and heat in vain. This is what he says, “That they may do it with joy, and not with grief; for that is unprofitable for you.” Did he say, “unprofitable for them”?

No. He said, “unprofitable for you.” For when those who are set over you are saddened at your evil deeds, it is profitable for them; their very sadness is profitable for them; but it is unprofitable for you. But we do not wish that anything should be profitable for us, which for you is unprofitable. Let us then, Brethren, do good together in the Lord's field; that at the reward we may rejoice together.