Charity and Its Fruits
6. That all the Christian graces are alike related to one and the same grace, namely, charity, or Divine love, as the sum of them all. — As we have before seen, charity, or love, is the sum of all true Christian graces, however many names we may give them. And however different the modes of their exercise, or the ways of their manifestation, if we do but carefully examine them, we shall find they are all resolved into one. Love, or charity, is the fulfilling of them all, and they are but so many diversifications, and different branches, and relations, and modes of exercise, of the same thing. One grace does, in effect, contain them all, just as the one principle of life comprehends all its manifestations. And hence it is no wonder that they are always together, and are dependent on and implied in one another.
In the application of this subject,
1. It may aid us to understand in what sense old things are said to be done away, and all things become new, in conversion. — This is what the apostle teaches us is the fact. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17 ). Now the doctrine of the text, and what has been said under it, may in some measure show us how this is; for by this we learn, that all the graces of Christianity are at once imparted in conversion, inasmuch as they are all linked together, so that, when one is bestowed, all are bestowed, and not a single one merely. A true convert, the moment he is converted, is possessed not of one or two, but of all holy principles, and all gracious dispositions. They may be feeble, indeed., like the faculties and powers of an infant child, but they are all truly there, and will be seen flowing out progressively in every kind of holy feeling and behavior toward both God and man. In every real convert there are as many graces as there were in Jesus Christ himself, which is what the evangelist John means, when he says, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth;… and of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace" (John 1:14-16 ). And, indeed, it cannot be otherwise, for all