Titus 3:14 And let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful. It is with professions of religion, especially such as become so in a time of outpouring of the Spirit of God, as it is with blossoms in the spring; there are vast numbers of them upon the trees which all look fair and promising, but yet many of them never come to anything, and many of those that in a little while wither up, drop off, and rot under the trees, yet for a while look as beautiful and gay as others; and not only so, but smell sweet and send forth a pleasant odour, so that we cannot, by any of our senses, certainly distinguish those blossoms which have in them that secret virtue which will afterward appear in the fruit, and that inward solidity and strength which shall enable them to bear, and cause them to be perfected by the hot summer sun that will dry up the others. It is the mature fruit which comes afterward, and not the beautiful colour and smell of the blossoms, that we must judge by. (Jonathan Edwards.) Parallel Verses KJV: And let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful. |
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