July 2

Ready for every good work

“If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work” (2 Tim. 2:21).
“Be ready to every good work” (Titus 3:1).

PREPARED UNTO EVERY GOOD WORK.—This last characteristic means readiness for all sorts of service. The teaching is that holiness is the source of every kind of human excellence. It sets to work all our powers and in the best possible directions. It means the sanctification of hands, feet, brain, temper, pocket, the whole man inwardly and outwardly. The desire and aim then is to make a “good work” of whatever is given us to do, and to do it in the best and most perfect way, according to our light and knowledge; let it be the painting of a picture, the sweeping of a room, the managing of a business, or the preaching of a sermon.


The meanest service is ennobled by its lofty motive when we work under the inspiration of the Cross. In estimating the value of Christian work we often think too much of our efforts and too little of our spirit and life, but character is really of more importance than our activities. “Words have a weight,” says Thomas Carlyle, “when there is a man behind them,” and when behind our efforts there is the fragrance of a holy and consistent life our labor cannot be in vain. “Holy living is the rhetoric that tells best in this age of facts.” The measure of our holiness is the measure of our power. By this means and this only are we “prepared unto every good work.”
Let us note the word “every,” because we shall be many-sided when our hearts are cleansed from all sin. We are in danger of limiting our conceptions of duty to some particular sphere, repeating one note instead of a full chord, but the world is wide, the human need is great, and the best servants are the servants of all work. They are always on the alert for opportunities to do good, and ready even if the call comes suddenly, as it often does. It is not with them as with many who are not living with their loins girt, and who often let their opportunity pass before they have pulled themselves together. It is a grand thing to be “prepared unto every good work”—always ready. Chrysostom interprets the words to mean “ready for every emergency which would add to the glory of God, ready even for death, if needs be, or any other painful witness.”
(From New Testament Holiness, by Thomas Cook. Used by permission of the Epworth Press).

Readiness for God means that we are ready to do the tiniest little thing or the great big thing, it makes no difference. . . . A ready person never has to get ready.

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