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Men are affected by the course they pursue; for good or bad their conduct comes home to them. The fulness of the backslider's misery will come out of his own ways, and the fulness of the good man's content will spring out of the love of God which is shed abroad in his heart.

I. THE BACKSLIDER. This class includes —

1. Apostates. Those who unite them- selves with the Church of Christ and for a time act as if they were subjects of a real change of heart. Then they break away and return back to their worldliness. Such was Judas.

2. Those who go into open sin. Men who descend from purity to careless living, and from careless living to indulgence of the flesh.

3. Those who, in any measure or degree, even for a very little time, decline from the point which they have reached. Note the word "backslider." He is not a back-runner, nor a back-leaper, but a back-slider; he slides back with an easy, effortless motion, softly, quietly, perhaps unsuspected by himself or anybody else. Nobody ever slides up. The Christian life is a climbing. If you would know how to back-slide, the answer is, "Leave off going forward and you will slide backward." Note that this is a backslider in heart. All backsliding begins within, begins with the heart's growing lukewarm. What is the backslider's history? "He shall be filled with his own ways." The first kind of fulness is absorption in his carnal pursuits. Then they begin to pride themselves upon their condition and to glory in their shame. Presently the backslider encounters chastisement, and that from a rod of his own making. A fourth stage is at last reached by gracious men and women. They become satiated and dissatisfied, miserable and discontented.

II. THE GOOD MAN. His name and history. The text does not say he is satisfied with himself. No truly good man is ever self-satisfied. The good man is satisfied from himself. A good man is on the side of good. He who truly loves that which is good must be in measure good himself. A good man is "satisfied from himself" because he is independent of outward circumstances, and of the praise of others. The Christian man is content with the well of upspringing water of life which the Lord has placed within him. Faith is in the good man's heart, and he is satisfied with what faith brings him. Pardon, adoption, conquest over temptation, everything he requires. Hope and love are in the good man's heart. When the good man is enabled by Divine grace to live in obedience to God, he must, as a necessary consequence, enjoy peace of mind.... who takes the yoke of Christ upon him, and learns of Him, finds rest unto his soul.

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

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KJV: The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: and a good man shall be satisfied from himself.

WEB: The unfaithful will be repaid for his own ways; likewise a good man will be rewarded for his ways.