There are many professors whose eye of obedience is not single. They live in this world, they say, "for Christ," but really no one can believe them. If you can judge them by their fruits, they seem to live for almost any other objective than Christ! Be one of God's own larks; be an honest lark, looking and going in the same direction with a single purpose, for your double purpose will make the world suspect you of hypocrisy!
If you make your own business God's business, you will do your business well; and you will be useful in your day and generation. Then be about your Father's business. It was his Father’s business made him sweat great drops of blood; his Father’s business ploughed his back with many gory furrows; his Father’s business pricked his temple with the thorn crown; his Father’s business made him mocked and spit upon. And from that single object the most splendid temptation could not make him diverge. You may heap together the glittering pomps and the gaudy jewels, but he treads them all beneath his feet. The Cross to him was brighter than a crown, the suffering more dear than wealth and honor.
Our business is a more radical one, the one of the axe to the root of the tree by the change of the nature. Our object is more lasting. We have to do with immortal souls and their eternal future. The business of the Church is salvation! Settle it that this is the top and bottom of the business and throw your whole strength in the name of Christ and by the power of the Eternal Spirit into this one objective, if by any means you may save some and bring some to Jesus that they may be delivered from the wrath to come! So with you, Christian people, your one business in life is to lead men to believe in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and every other thing should be made subservient to this one objective. If you can but get them saved, everything else will come right in due time.
There is a laudable pursuit of gain, without which business would not properly be carried on, but there is a line, scarcely as broad as a razor's edge, between diligence in business and greediness for gain. We can so easily pass from the one into the other that we may hardly be aware of it. When a man is increasing his investments, when he is extending his agencies, when he is enlarging his warehouse, when he is employing a larger number of persons than formerly, or even when he is bemoaning the depression of his trade and his heart is aching because he has only half as much business as before, let him examine himself. Though a single staff is such a convenience that a traveler without one may sigh for it, yet a dozen canes would be a load which would make the burdened man prefer, rather, to have no staff at all than to have so many to carry.
But if you are a child of God, a single text will be enough for you. I set a solitary passage of God's Word against a Sanhedrim of philosophers! He came into the world, to Bethlehem's manger and afterwards to Calvary's Cross, with this as His one business, that He might save sinners! Is He not able to save? Is He not just the Savior that we need? God and yet Man in one Person! It is His business, it is not yours. Leave yourself in His hands and He will save you, to the praise of the glory of His Grace.
He has no provision for his most common needs and most true are his words as he writes, "For whom I have suffered the loss of all things." Let us enter the prison and put a personal question to the good man. Paul, your faith has brought you to absolute penury and friendlessness. I commend to you Christians that you give your whole selves to Christ, that from this day forward you serve Him with spirit, soul and body, for after all, there is nothing worth living for, nothing worth even giving a single tear for if you lose it, nor worth a smile if you gain it, save only that which is bound up in Him.